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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28417404">walk on stage</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/willthrowhands/pseuds/willthrowhands'>willthrowhands</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>therefore, elsewhere [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>.... briefly, ....you can probably see where this is going, Character Study, Exiled TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sad Toby Smith | Tubbo, Toby Smith | Tubbo-centric, and this is mostly canon-compliant so what do you know, bold of you to assume i have the braincells for an actual character study, expecially tubbo, no beta we die like hot girl, replaced with hotter girl, sometimes the real angst was the canon along the way, yeah they're not going through a great time</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 18:15:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>25,710</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28417404</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/willthrowhands/pseuds/willthrowhands</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>here's an open secret: Tubbo is the worst president L'manberg has ever has. He is also the best one. Take that as you will.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Toby Smith | Tubbo &amp; TommyInnit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>therefore, elsewhere [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2098614</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>115</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>486</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Completed stories I've read</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. what you do</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello! i made myself sad when i wrote this, and now i will make you sad too. i think.</p><p>(Also, if you thing I should add anything (ie. warnings, etc) in the tags, let me know other than that, have a nice read n let me know what you think!)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>1.<br/>He’s not expecting it when Wilbur points his finger at him, and announces, “Tubbo, would you come up to the stage?”</p><p>He’s still in denial when he receives the presidency. He looks at everyone’s faces, all lit up with joy, glances at Technoblade (who stands impassively) and Dream (who stands behind him). He does not see Wilbur again.</p><p>He smiles, and opens his mouth to talk.</p><p>For five minutes, he has it all. He has gotten back the land of his home, his people brought together under the banner of victory. There’s Niki and Fundy, standing side by side, one cheering, the other laughing. Behind them stands Eret, who sticks out from the crowd, looking slightly nervous, but waving all the same. To the other end, he sees Quackity grinning full force, his hands waving at him as he mouths something unheard in the noise of triumph. To his right, Tommy is laughing, his eyes still shadowed by weeks of silence and nightmares that he’d never admit to, but laughing here, now, all the same - and Tubbo finds himself grinning along. The joy is infectious. He’s standing on the podium and everything shines under the fading light of the sunset.</p><p>For five minutes, he is on top of the world, and he is breathless with it.</p><p>And then Wilbur’s voice crackles through the comms. He says the line. Color sparkles through the air, and the fireworks that had been bursting through the sky are suddenly heading to where he stood on the podium, reminiscent of the scene from so long ago, with Technoblade being on the trigger end. Then the ground shakes, and everything is up in the air. He’s fallen flat on his back, and the wind is knocked out of lungs.</p><p>In the span of five seconds, he loses it all.</p><p>(When they start to rebuild, Tubbo can’t help but hesitate when they reach the ruins of the podium. They probably shouldn’t rebuild that structure. They might, though. There’s a lot they probably won’t rebuild, but the podium is just something Tubbo won’t have a hand in himself.</p><p>Around them, his execution decorations still dangle from various posts.</p><p>He can’t look at bright colors the same way, and flinches whenever the noises get too loud. He’s barely glued back together, and he can see how the cracks have been formed in everybody else.</p><p>He’s breathless, now, for an entirely different reason. )</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>2.<br/>Tommy’s exile is not a swift motion. It is slow, it is terrible, it is an act in three parts, for a horrible play which foretells the story of a decline that will last throughout the rest of the narrative.</p><p>It starts with a house on fire. An angry accusation that grows into something more. (It starts before then, when Eret is dumped out of his throne and replaced with the snap of a finger.)</p><p>It’s obvious to anyone with half a brain, that the culprit stands before, them, his teeth flashing in a nervous grin, his laughter loud and forced, his anger half-true, half a facade. It’s an act Tubbo knows all too well.</p><p>Dream tells him his terms of appeasement. Tubbo blanches.</p><p>He can’t … entertain that solution. That’s never been on the plate before (it has) and Tubbo wouldn’t break apart what he just built (well… Could he? That’d be the problem).</p><p>They’re best friends. Dream should know this. (Dream knows, but he likely does not care. When has he ever cared? Tommy told you this: the only “help” Dream had to offer was to load Wilbur at his worst with destructive force. Wilbur only spiraled further, taking himself out and everything within a blast’s radius around him. Sometimes, you think Dream knew what he was doing.)</p><p>The court… does not go well. Tommy is screaming, then confessing, all in a rapidly done fire, nobody is listening, and Dream is insisting, insisting, he has the power to ruin them all, and Tubbo walks the line.</p><p>Dream says, “As long as Tommy’s Vice President, there can’t be peace.” It’s straightforward. It’s brutal. It’s sort of the truth. He knows it. Dream knows it. His cabinet, giving each other looks behind him, they know it. Tommy, who was rattling the bars, yelling at them, he was it. As long as Tommy is around, there will be conflict.</p><p>(Later, Tubbo learns this - as long as Tommy was around, there would have been life. Conflict yes, but noise, excitement, joy, passion was it really was.</p><p>Later, he remembers this: Tommy gave up the presidency, but he also didn’t take up the position as vice president. They had a talk, in that moment, back then. Tubbo told him the position would be open as long as he needed, for when he got back his disks. Then it could be them, together, right hand man on both ends.</p><p>He wonders why they had decided that Tommy had taken the position, in the end.)</p><p>They get their week.</p><p> </p><p>2⅓.<br/>Tommy makes sure to do everything with spite, anger with every word, every action. He throws the “shitty girl diary” at Fundy and stalks off. Tubbo feels almost as miserable as Tommy looks, under this arrangement. He doesn’t do much, though, other than the constant one-sided banter with whichever unfortunate soul has to supervise him that day.</p><p>Dream stops by, nothing to offer except the ominous reminder that this arrangement only exists because Dream has <em>permitted</em> them this exception, that Dream could change his mind at the slightest misdemeanor. When Tubbo reminds his cabinet that, reminds Tommy that, they shrug it off. They tell him he worries too much about Dream, or in Tommy’s eloquent language: “don’t become Dream’s bitch, big T.” They don’t feel the countdown, the deadline, and hourglass pouring sand into L’manberg.</p><p>The obsidian walls don’t look great, cutting through the old boundaries. They feel suffocating. Tubbo feels it. He knows Fundy feels it, Quackity feels it, Tommy, who sulks in his mining and house-building, either far under the ground or high up in the sky on that cobblestone tower, feels it. He doesn’t understand why they don’t get that Dream poses a genuine threat. If he can build those walls, he probably can do more than that. He could do so much more - and Tommy is the hinge that the door will swing on.</p><p>At the end of the week, Tubbo is starting to feel more tired than he ever had been.</p><p> </p><p>2 and ⅙th.</p><p>Tubbo <strike>sleeps in</strike> oversleeps on the day that the verdict is due. He hastily tightens his tie, fingers trembling on the knot. He runs over to where the rest of his cabinet’s decided to meet up to plan the meeting with Dream in private.</p><p>They make a plan. They meet Dream. Tommy shows up. The plan falls apart when Tommy pulls out Spirit.</p><p>Dream heads out the door. The cabinet follows. Tommy follows. They mock him.</p><p>Tubbo follows. He knows this won’t end well.</p><p>He is right. They fight. He is given three days.</p><p> </p><p>(Act One concludes. Act Two begins.)</p><p> </p><p>2 and 1/9th .</p><p>Three days is not very much time, in retrospect. The clock begins the moment Dream leaves. No, it begins the moment Tommy whirls around, and screams at him, how he should’ve had his back, that Tubbo should’ve never even given Dream an inch, that Tubbo, Tubbo, Tubbo, if the cards were reversed - and the band snaps. Anger boils over.</p><p>“If the cards were reversed, <em>this</em> would’ve never happened! You know why, Tommy?” He screams back. Tommy has gone silent, his pale blue eyes wide in shock. Fundy and Quackity have taken a step back. He sighs. “You know <em>why</em>, Tommy? Because I would’ve listened to you! I wouldn’t have done this -” and he gestures broadly to the walls.</p><p>“You’re selfish, Tommy.”</p><p>(Tommy whispers back, you’re becoming Schlatt, you can’t do that, you can’t do this. He wants to whisper back, watch me. But he tells him this instead- you’re becoming him. They both know who he is.</p><p>It wouldn’t have been that bad to be Schlatt, in retrospect. At least he knew he was hated, and just didn’t care that he was. At least he was a leader, powerful in his own right. At least he was selfish.</p><p>It wouldn’t have been that bad to be Wilbur, even. At least he was a hero, before everything. At least he didn’t stop fighting, until the end. At least he was no-one’s underdog, powerful in his own right. At least he was selfish.</p><p>Tubbo wants to be selfish, sometimes. He wants to be powerful, sometimes. He can’t be, and all of his actions still lead him down the same path as the men before him.</p><p>Sometimes he wonders if he’ll die like them, too.)</p><p>They depart.</p><p>The next three days are spent… well, working on repairing L’manberg. Building houses. Signing papers. Ignoring his cabinet, who in turn, tip-toe around him. He wants to say something to them, ask them if it was his age or if they had some problem with him, why they wouldn’t ever listen to him when push came to shove, why they kept shoving past him and overpowering him whenever it came to making decisions? Did they think he was… naive?</p><p>(Schlatt though he was naive. Wilbur, too. He was under both of their thumbs, in the end. Both of them distrusted him, though. One sought to kill him. The other tried. What did that spell for everyone under his power, then?</p><p>Somewhere in the background fireworks explode. His ears kept ringing. When he closes his eyes, he can see red, red, and a flurry of color. His skin itches with the burn. He’s always in the center, when it happens.</p><p>He often wakes up, sweaty, reaching for… something. There’s always fire. There’s always noise. Schlatt to the side, watching, waiting. Techno’s impassive face morphed into Wilbur’s, contorted with madness and grief, and now into Dream’s, his mask, cold and unfazed, white porcelain. The smile follows him into the dark. It’s hard to remember the rest of it, but there’s too much of it that he doesn’t want to think about, anyway. So much of it. It’s probably for the better, that he can’t.</p><p><strike>The visions of his dreams keep plaguing him even in the daylight</strike>.</p><p>He thinks they’ve gotten worse, lately.)</p><p>At some point, Wilbur… well, Ghostbur now, tells him he “might be the best president L’manberg’s ever had!”, and Tubbo didn’t have the heart to tell him that the bar’s been set pretty low in that regard. He thinks about it, sometimes, what he’d be known for as president. Back then, he thought it’d be for the rebuilding, the peace. Now, he thinks, he’ll be the most pathetic president they’ve ever had on their plate.</p><p>(Tubbo wasn’t built for this role, he thinks then, but now he knows he was. He might be the most passive mediator their country ever sees. Undriven. Complaint. “Peaceful”.)</p><p>Tommy approaches him, once, with a gift and an apology. The apology feels… fake. Even though, Tubbo knows that Tommy surely meant the apology, in that he doesn’t want their relationship to fall apart, in that he’s apologizing to Tubbo, but for the fight, the words he said, if he was sorry for what he’d done, he’s really… not.</p><p>Tubbo knows this: Tommy never takes back anything, genuinely. Not to anybody’s face. He’ll never admit guilt (“it was the perfect crime!” Tommy's voice rings in his head. It was preceded by and followed by denial of said confession). It wouldn’t be true to his character. It probably wouldn’t be truthful either.</p><p>Tubbo remembers Tommy’s apologies. It had been fun, when they were the ones who were causing the problems, when they had to apologise, together. Now?</p><p>He doesn’t like being on the other end very much.</p><p>(The three days pass. Act two begins.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>3.<br/>The morning rolls over. Tubbo almost doesn’t want to get up, but he does anyway, because he has to. The same sentiment plays as he ties his tie, pulls on his coat, and makes eggs. He doesn’t add anything to them.</p><p>(Here’s a thought.</p><p>The trolley problem dictates that you have a choice. You can switch a lever, which will switch the tracks where the train will pass through. On one side, there is one person. On the other, there are five. Would you sacrifice one for five? Minimize the collateral damage. An easy choice, surely.</p><p>Here’s a variation. Now that one person is someone you love, someone you cherish, someone you value. On the other side, there are still five people. Who do you choose to save?</p><p>Now, that one person is somebody you love, you cherish, you value. On the other side, there is a country that has taken everything from you. You love both. Which do you choose to save?</p><p>Now, that one person is Tommy. On the other side, are the very people who are yelling at you for your hesitation, but you stand before them anyway. You want to protect both. Neither will get off the tracks. There is a man behind you, holding the lever. Whatever you say next determines nothing. Nobody listens. In this moment, you are powerless. Who do you choose to save?)</p><p>He goes and meets the cabinet. They plan. Tommy shows up, and it falls apart before it starts.</p><p>Tubbo might’ve understood once, back then, when they were young and the disks were of no real material value yet, when their days on the server were plagued by minor chaos and conflict, and family and joy - but now?</p><p>Now he doesn’t get it - how Tommy could sway them off-track so, so easily, how they rally under a fragile banner, how everyone in the room could see how Tommy was making everything up on the go to save his own skin, and yet, they’re actually listening to him, even when he’s declaring war and rambling about a thousand stupid ideas that’d all end up with Tubbo having to drag them out of a burning L’manberg. Maybe at the end of it, they might all be dead. He grits his teeth.</p><p>“Guys, ...” He tries, but they ignore him. They’re not listening. They never do. Tommy is glowing, in this moment, in his own panic-driven excitement, as he rallies them into a frenzy, and he is all Wilbur, in this moment, but entirely not - Tubbo can see Wilbur’s pride, Wilbur’s charisma, all contorted into a different shape in the form of one Tommyinnit, and here, Tubbo almost believes in him. Almost, being the key here.</p><p>Tommy is lying through his teeth, and the problem is that he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. He tells them all these things, and they all almost believe they could win, if this, if that but the reality was, none of these things would happen. Maybe Tommy could believe it, and maybe his cabinet only listened out of distrust towards the president and defiance against Dream, but Tubbo knew better</p><p>No, the Badlands wouldn’t side with them. No, Technoblade certainly wouldn’t (and Tubbo wouldn’t even be able to stand with the man around, anyway, all he’d hear would the <em>pop pop boom</em> of the fireworks, the burning on his face as his skin scorched from the heat and the blast, the wind being knocked out of his lungs and he wouldn’t be able to breath and Techno is standing before him -), and they don’t have any other allies.</p><p>And now Dream was coming.</p><p>And as much as he wanted to shield them all, as much as he wanted to rail against Dream for making him choose, as angry and hurt as he felt, Tubbo didn’t think he could lead them into a war. He doesn’t think he could fight another war, this soon to the last one.</p><p>He doesn’t think he could win a war, like this. He doesn’t think he’s ever won one, before, anyway.</p><p>(Here’s a thought.</p><p>The trolley problem dictates that you have a choice. You can switch a lever, which will switch the tracks where the train will pass through. On one side, is Tommy. On the other side, are the very people who are yelling at you for your hesitation, but you stand before them anyway. You want to protect both. Neither will get off the tracks. There is a man behind you, telling you to make the choice. In this moment, you are powerful. Who do you choose to save?</p><p>They never tell you how it feels to pull the lever.)</p><p>He tells Dream to escort Tommy out of L’manberg.</p><p>(The face Tommy makes follows him into his dreams. Now, Schlatt becomes Dream, Techno becomes Wilbur, becomes Tommy. Tommy is silent, his eyes wide and pale and wet, and then he is screaming, he is angry, betrayed, confused, and then he is dragged away by green-sleeved hands.</p><p>Tubbo wakes up every morning after.</p><p><strike>“You’re just like Schlatt!”</strike>)</p><p> </p><p>(Act Three ends. The exile is concluded.</p><p> </p><p>From then, things only get worse.)</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. what you know</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>tubbo doesn't regret his decision! </p><p>(he regrets the choice)</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>haha, write the same number of words as last, i said. why are you writing more, i said. why are we surpassing three times the word count than last time, i said. p a i n,,,</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>1.</p><p>L’manberg goes quiet.</p><p> </p><p>Tubbo finds himself straining to hear Tommy shouting somewhere, at times, or about to turn to say something, to find Tommy no longer behind him. The space where Tommy occupied was evident in its emptiness. The silence follows. It stings a little, but it was that, or they all die. Or so, he told himself. Because there <em> might’ve </em> been another solution, there could have been a way, what if he just didn’t look for it hard enough, what if he missed something, Tommy could’ve been here- </p><p> </p><p>He stops thinking about the what-ifs.</p><p> </p><p>Then, there’s a lot of paperwork to handle, but that’s fine. He’s been doing Tommy’s workload anyway, what with Tommy often slacking off on his duties as Vice President, what’s a little more work? And now with the paperwork to sign for the repositioning in his cabinet, with Quackity as the new Vice, and Fundy taking Quackity’s spot, and they need to re-allocate resources for the rest of the construction, and repair whatever the walls had damaged or run through once they came down, and… well… it’s quiet, in the new whitehouse. </p><p> </p><p>(It doesn’t help that the paperwork for Tommy’s exile had been brought personally by Dream, the morning after. He had thanked Dream then, for the delivery, but had shoved it under the pile the moment the man had walked out of the office. </p><p> </p><p>He takes it out, once. He can hardly read it, the letters swimming through the page. He does not take it out again, of his own violation.)</p><p> </p><p>He buys a new tie, at some point. It’s easier to put on, with the clip. It’s bright red, like... like the shirt.</p><p> </p><p>He tries to talk to his cabinet, (and he knows they’re pulling their weight, but it’d be nice to work with someone else in the room, too), but they… they aren’t too happy with him. They tolerate him, now, sure, and Quackity has been talking about some plans that he approved for (no he doesn’t approve <em> of </em> them but, but their last conversation… well…</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “You know what you’re doing, Tubbo? You know what this looks like?” Quackity snarls, his lip drawn back in vicious rage. Tubbo knows what comes next, and he is tired, and he wishes he never got out of bed, never had to deal with this awful choice, but he continues it anyway. “What, Quackity? What does this look like?” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “You’re acting like him! This, you’re acting just like Schlatt! This - This, all this, is exactly what he would do!” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Ah, so conversation continues. The dark obsidian walls stand behind them, like the sides of a box, a heavy reminder of the prize he paid for the price of a friend. He feels hollow, cold without Tommy behind him, where he just stood.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> (“Tommy, you are hereby exiled from L’manberg.” He says. His voice hardly waivers, it’s strong and steady, and he hates it, hates himself for being able to do this. He knows he’ll never be able to rescind this. Not himself, as president. Not himself, as Tommy’s friend. But…  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> He wants to punch Dream straight off where he stood on the wall, for making him do this, he wants to shout back at his cabinet, who are currently screaming at him in rage, for never ever letting him talk, for always overpowering him, he knows he is young, but they, but Dream, never let him.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> He wants to grab Tommy by his shirt and shake him, why would do this to me, why would make me choose like this, don’t you care, don’t you understand, he wants to grab Tommy and pull him in, hold him tight and never let him go. He wants to cry, crybaby Tubbo, tell Tommy that it’s just them against the world, screw everything else. He wants to run far, far away with him. He wants to be happy. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> But…  his gifted (burdensome) responsibility dictated that he needed to do what was best for the country. And Dream was the one holding a knife to it. And now, he lets that knife cut their bonds instead of their lives. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> But the knife doesn’t stop there, as Dream moves forward to take Tommy. It carves into him. It cuts with a grief so deep that it carves out something in him, the moment he says those words, the moment Tommy makes that face, the moment they are dragged apart. Separate. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> There is something missing, now.) </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “I am not-” He starts, quietly, and they start shouting over each other, Fundy accusing, accusing, loudly, Quackity, with his sad angry eyes. Both of them, with lingering betrayal lined in their faces. Quackity says, “I was his vice president! I was his right hand man! I know what he’d do! This is exactly the shit he’d pull!”  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “No, no it isn't,'' he responds back. And it’s really not, it’s not, because Schlatt would never have had to do this, because Schlatt didn’t have friends. Because Schlatt didn’t care about people. Because when Schlatt punished his citizens, he did it with fanfare, with festivity and -  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> ( “Tubbo, would you come up to the stage?” A grin. He smiles, nervously, and straightens his tie. He clears his throat and looks to the crowd. The grin burns into his back as he speaks. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Then, there is a wall behind him, when he backs away. There is a wall around him, and he is trapped in concrete. There is Technoblade, a firework pointed between his eyes. He can faintly hear Quackity rapidly talking, pleading, and he can hear Wilbur saying “He won’t hurt you!” with that sympathetic smile and those bright eyes (mad, mad eyes) that looked farther than he could ever see, and now, he can hear Schlatt shouting, “Right here, right now!”   </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> And now, Technoblade is in front of him, crossbow in hand. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “And make it hurt!” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> And now, his face grim with resolve, he aims the shot.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p><em> This isn’t the first time Tubbo dies trapped, but it is the last </em> <em> .) </em></p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <em> Schlatt wouldn’t have felt the price.  </em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <em> (‘Or would he?’ Tubbo wonders, once, when he sits behind the same desk they both did, as he finds the empty bottle in the very back of the lowest drawer, fingers grazing on smooth glass instead of the countless amounts of stashed-away paperwork.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Well, it’s mostly empty, really. It’s not as dusty as the rest of the things in the drawer, and it sloshes slightly when he pulls it out, fine grey soot clinging to his fingertips.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> There were other bottles like it, once, before they had thrown them all away, desperate to clear the room for Tubbo’s new occupancy, clear the legacy so Tubbo could settle fresh, trash reminders of their country’s history. He thumbs the bottle, and considers. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> ‘Did he?’) </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Instead, he turns away. He hears Fundy scoff, and Quackity murmurs something to him, as the two of them walk away from where he stood, under the expanse of the wall, and he won’t let himself cry. Not here. Not now. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>… well, their last talk didn’t go so great. And now, the cabinet, they do their work, and they give him their work, and they all smile, grit teeth, because there’s a tension he needs to repair, and nobody will sit with him in the office.</p><p> </p><p>It’s quiet now.</p><p> </p><p>He looks over to the chest in the corner of the room- there’s a jukebox in the off-</p><p> </p><p>(-<em> “They’re the only thing that I care about,” Tommy said, then, quietly, resolutely. Tubbo stops. </em></p><p> </p><p><em> “Really. The only thing?” </em>)</p><p> </p><p>-ice, maybe he could -</p><p> </p><p>( <em> -it’s about them again, of course it is, and something bubbles up in his chest, hot like lava, burning like fire, and he’s angry. If Tommy wanted them so much, so much that he’s willing to go to war for them, he should stayed president and led their charge, because Tubbo wasn’t going to do it for him. He wasn’t going to throw a whole deck of cards in the trash for two aces. He couldn’t. </em></p><p> </p><p>
  <em> And if Tommy wanted to forfeit Tubbo for them- </em>
</p><p> </p><p><em>  “They don’t matter, Tommy!” He’s shouting, and for once in his life, Tommy shuts up. He’s stuttering now, lost, confused (why, what, if you have no attachments to anything, why does anything matter then, Tubbo), and Tubbo feels a jealousy well up from somewhere. “How can you not see that!? They don’t matter!!!” </em>)</p><p> </p><p>- maybe not.</p><p> </p><p>(It’s quiet now.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>1 ⅛</p><p> </p><p>Later, he thinks about the festival. He thinks about it a lot, but more so recently. </p><p> </p><p>In this moment, he thinks about the speech he had made, the one with the trigger phrase in it. He had been heavily guided by Schlatt and Fundy, in terms of what to write, but he felt clever with the metaphor he came up with. Clever up until he realized he had just designed and decorated his own execution (clever, up until he was trapped in those concrete walls).</p><p> </p><p>If he had to be honest (or he tells himself), the presidency was like a lettuce - if you washed off the bad stuff, all the things that had eaten away at the surface (Schlatt laughing, maniacally, as he sentenced him to death, Wilbur laughing, viciously, as he sentenced them all to death), there were so many layers that had been… good. Like the family Wilbur had inscribed through the revolutionary efforts for independence, the beautiful builds Schlatt had them construct under his reign - Tubbo would take what he could get.</p><p> </p><p>(In the end, both presidents had been alone, when they died, when what they stood for died. Tubbo wonders, often, if it was a curse that’d befall him next.</p><p> </p><p>He never thought he’d ever wish it’d come sooner.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>2.</p><p>The walls are coming down. They’re coming down, slowly, since obsidian takes forever to break, so they’re still (confining, trapping walls, too hard to break, and he can’t-) really large, but the walls are coming down, and Dream rarely wears his armor in the confines of L’manberg. It’s a slow process.</p><p> </p><p>“Isn’t it great?” He asks Fundy once, when the fox had approached him with the revised financial reports for the various projects the cabinet had signed off on, when they started the rebuilding. Fundy had looked up, slowly, eyes narrowed in a cautious squint, his mouth set in a line. “Dream’s taking down the walls! L’manberg is <em> finally </em>recognized as its own country!”</p><p> </p><p>Fundy hums, looking down at the documents in his hands. Once, he had made a crayon-colored suit to join the rebellion, once he had fought alongside them against Dream, with his father, with them, rejoicing in the joy of independence. Once, Fundy had betrayed them all, on the name of the country and its efforts to divorce itself from tyranny, in an attempt to save his skin, and then later, to save them all. Once, Fundy had been the son of this country, once, he had been a traitor, once he had become a spy. </p><p> </p><p>( Once, he’s standing in the crowd, a front-row seat to an execution. Once, he says nothing, and all Tubbo sees is a distant expression of shock before all he sees is color, and then nothing more. Once, he was silent.)</p><p> </p><p>Once, Fundy had sacrificed for this nation (they all did, he’s not the only one), and received nothing but blood, sweat and tears back. And now they have their country, and the man they had fought against for it so long ago, has finally aquised on his own terms.</p><p> </p><p>Now, he is silent</p><p> </p><p>Tubbo, nervously, asks, “Isn’t this everything we fought for?”</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah… it is, isn’t it.” Fundy responds, his tone flat. Tubbo’s shoulders drop.</p><p> </p><p>(<em> “You’re… you’re actually acting like Schlatt,” he says, eyes wide, more out of confusion than anger </em>.)</p><p> </p><p>And here, in this awkward silence, Tubbo finds himself wanting to apologise. And the thing is, he’d apologize if he could, but…  he doesn't regret it. He had a choice: a single person, or his country. The exile of one for the life of many, or the death of them all. He doesn't have Tommy's meaningless excuses, his thousand justifications, false remorse. It’s plain and simple: Tubbo made a decision, atop the wall, and now he has to live with it. There are no take-backs. </p><p> </p><p>It’d be lying, to say sorry when he didn’t regret it. And Tubbo is no liar.</p><p> </p><p>He’s about to turn away, when he hears Fundy, softly, ask, “But how could you be okay with the cost?” </p><p> </p><p>“... It was either him, or all of us… I couldn’t do that to our country.” Tubbo answers. But this answer doesn’t settle right (not for him, no, he doesn’t regret it, it was a choice, he had no choice, but oh, <em> oh </em> he will), and clearly, as he watches Fundy’s tail swish side to side, as he watches emotions flicker through his face, one after another, before settling on something simultaneously pitying and resentful. “And you were okay with that?” (Would you be able to do that again? is one of the unspoken questions, here. There are more, the other questions he knows Fundy is actually asking.</p><p> </p><p>To each and all of them, there is an answer, and none of those answers are right.)</p><p> </p><p>“... Yes.” He says. (You don’t know how much he needs this to be true.)</p><p> </p><p>Something seems to connect, because within a moment, a metaphorical door is shut, and Fundy’s face becomes impassive, hard as stone. “Oh.” He says simply, and then before anything else can be said, he hears a baritone timber calling out, “Fundy! I need to talk to you about something.”</p><p> </p><p>It’s Eret, Eret who is walking down the path, waving at them. (Eret, who whispers, I have something to show you, something in a room far far away from help, Eret who leads them to death in the form of a reverse Trojan horse. Eret, who he still hesitates around.</p><p> </p><p>Even though the vicious sting of betrayal had faded over time, even though Tubbo is not one for grudges, sometimes he can’t help but feel the piercing blade in his back, bisecting, dissecting, burning agony like fire. Sometimes he can’t help but hear the quiet declaration that Eret had confessed to them moments before. </p><p> </p><p>Wilbur’s last line over the comms ensured he’d never forget that line anyway.)</p><p> </p><p>Fundy walks away.</p><p> </p><p>(He is a liar.)</p><p> </p><p>2 (2).</p><p>The walls are coming down. They’re coming down, slowly, since obsidian takes forever to break, but they’re halfway gone. The walls are coming down, and Dream doesn’t wear his armor in the confines of L’manberg. As far as it gets, this is solidarity from the man they need it most from.</p><p> </p><p>The silence follows him, though. Even though the nation looks beautiful, with all the work they put into bringing it back from the ashes (like a… pee-nix, Tommy mispronounces, intentionally, likely, but Tubbo can’t stop laughing-), there is always something missing. Maybe they should’ve made the place more… </p><p> </p><p>(-color flashing in his face, scorching hot heat, burst from the blast, the red nozzle of the firework pointed between his eyes, Technoblade’s face-)</p><p> </p><p>…. prettier, somehow. Maybe more … decorative. (He pointedly does not look at the leftover streamers and decor from the previous festival. Festival his ass, he gripped once to Tommy, and they had laughed, then, in spite of it. Now no one talks about the festival, but he’s pretty sure it’s because they feel bad. He can tell, in the way they glance at him sideways, nervously, when the joke lands too close to the topic, when they think it offends him somehow. </p><p> </p><p>Tommy would’ve made those jokes. They would’ve laughed. </p><p> </p><p>Tommy isn’t here right now.)</p><p> </p><p>“You busy, Two-bo?” Quackity’s voice interjects. Tubbo scrambles for composure, briefly, before giving up the attempt. </p><p> </p><p>“Hey, uh, Quackity.” He stutters, and Quackity helps himself to a seat. His expression is passive, he is as smiley as he usually is, but there’s something sad in his gaze. It’s the same expression he made after the festival, when he finally bolted and they reunited in the stone ravines of Pogtopia, where he whispered, I’m so, so sorry Tubbo, I should’ve done something, I should’ve said something. But in the end, the fact remains they did nothing for each other. Quackity took the brunt of it during their time together as cabinet members while Tubbo stayed quiet, and Tubbo got the blast of it at the festival while Quackity stood by. </p><p> </p><p>“I thought…” Tubbo pauses, before continuing the thought (before his voice could shake, before he gave himself away). “I thought you were still mad at me.”</p><p> </p><p>Quackity smiles, but his eyes sharpen into something colder. “No, no, I’m not <em> mad </em> at you. I’m just upset. We made a decision together, and you went back on that, just like that.”</p><p> </p><p>His palms are sweaty. He wipes them on his pants. “But…”</p><p> </p><p>Quackity sighs, and leans back. His jacket has been replaced with a blue sweatshirt, now, with a little logo on the front and white stripes on the side, a luxury they couldn’t have under Schlatt's cabinet rules. It’s reminiscent of how he looked way back when, when Schlatt wasn’t on the server, when the wars and the election, none of it mattered. Now, it’s just their history, and Quackity looks almost the same as he did then, but now… </p><p> </p><p>Now, there’s an air of dangerous confidence around him. Recklessness, almost, but in the way Schlatt exuded self-assuredness. His eyes have the same sharp steel bite to them, cold like ice. He looks ten times more dangerous than he ever did then. </p><p> </p><p>(Out of the two of them, even though Tubbo ended up in his seat, it was Quackity who had become like him the most. Sometimes, he’s afraid of where that fact would end up going. </p><p> </p><p>There are moments, where Quackity says something, moves in a certain way, pauses, and in those moments he can feel the same golden-eyed glare on his back, the clink of a bottle.)</p><p> </p><p>It’s in this moment that Tubbo is harshly reminded that there are people vying for power, for his spot, and they are all older than him.</p><p> </p><p>“Listen, anyway, I had some things I wanted to talk to you about. I think-”</p><p> </p><p>Tubbo listens, but he can feel the eyes on his neck, and the empty space next to him.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>(He made a choice. They didn’t listen, but they needed to do it. They didn’t listen, but they never paid attention to the consequences. Ultimately, it was up to him.</p><p> </p><p>He tells himself that it was a choice that needed to be made. That’s a truth. He tells himself that it was a choice he doesn’t regret making. </p><p> </p><p>That’s… a truth?</p><p> </p><p>Don’t lie to yourself, someone whispers. The voice sounds like Schlatt. Like Wilbur. Like Dream. It sounds like anyone and everyone who has ever forced him to choose.)</p><p> </p><p>Everything would be fine.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>2  (0/2).</p><p>He lied. </p><p> </p><p>Well, that’s not true, exactly. L’manberg is fine. And if L’manberg is fine, then, he’s fine too. (But…)</p><p> </p><p>It’s fine. Things are going well. L’manberg is calm. It’s quiet. It’s peaceful. It’s a work-filled week. The week goes like this.</p><p> </p><p>On Monday, he starts fresh. He designates the work between the cabinet, and he cracks his knuckles (he can hear admonishing, brotherly worry, don’t do that, it’s bad for your health), and he gets to signing. Dream shows up briefly, to check up on the process (ask for that paperwork, oh don’t worry, i’m just working on some things i need to finish now, i’ll get to that), before he continues to work on his desk (and the moment dream leaves, he takes the paper out, the one that officiates <em> everything </em>, and he shoves it deep, deeper under the pile, and hopes it never resubmerges again). The silence has become a soft buzz in the atmosphere. Tubbo briefly thinks about the bee farm, before re-concentrating his efforts on the text before him.</p><p> </p><p>On Tuesday, he gets up early (the dreams chase him out of bed, behind his eyelids, tommy is being dragged away by dream, who morphs into wilbur, who says you’re the president of a crater, tubbo, and l’manberg is walled-in and shaking-), and he can see the purple-red streaks in the sky as the dawn rises but the walls still stand in the way of the sunlight. He can faintly see Dream on the wall, but he’s talking to someone, his weight resting on his pickaxe.</p><p> </p><p>On Wednesday, he catches Fundy on the way over, and trades documents. He doesn’t comment on the faint, pale yellowish stains on his fidgeting fingers and the strong smell that clings to his clothes. (he definitely doesn’t tell him that wilbur did this too, as the time stretched on in Pogtopia, as his madman’s rambles became his lucid thoughts, when the cavern became too enclosed. he doesn’t tell him about the half-burnt stubs he found littering the highest ledges, looking down, one step from a free fall down, the smoke that’d trail after him like a cloud of half-baked attempts to cope with everything that had come crashing down on him. he doesn’t tell him that wilbur had become desperate to set himself ablaze the moment he’d thought he truly lost everything, including his son. </p><p> </p><p>But he thinks it.) Fundy looks worse for wear, and Tubbo has nothing to give him (a little, spiteful corner of his mind says that he had it coming, no one trusts eret, unless you're asking to get hurt. This is ridiculous of course, because <em> that </em> had happened so long ago. but... eret is the <em> first </em> betrayer. the first to <em> betray </em>, even if he isn’t the last, it leaves a special mark, especially in the form of a sword-deep scar on one’s back).</p><p> </p><p>He gives Fundy back the papers, and they both give Ghostbur a little glance out of the corner of their eyes. </p><p> </p><p>On Thursday… on Thursday, nothing happens. He tries to pull himself together, better. He’s louder today - his laughs are obnoxious and forced, his walking makes click-clacking noises on the quartz floors, everything he does is overly exaggerated. Excitable. He greets Fundy and Quackity (and Ranboo, who’s been disappearing a lot lately), with enthusiasm. They’re taken aback by it, but he can tell, by the way Fundy hesitates less, lingering outside the door, before entering - by the way Quackity enthusiastically responds in rapid-fire spanish, the energy in the office that day, they welcome the change. </p><p> </p><p>Dream stops by again, in the office, while he works. He tells him he’s doing a good job.</p><p> </p><p>(On Thursday, he goes to the bench. He tells no one. He brings the disc with him, secretly, quietly. He touches the vinyl delicately. He doesn not play it on the jukebox. The silence is loud, in the presence of a noticeable absence.</p><p> </p><p>Even on the bench, he can’t see the sunset well anymore. It’s still blotted out by dark tall walls. He remembers when Puffy built her tower in front of their view, Tommy was so… so…</p><p> </p><p>Tommy was gone.</p><p> </p><p>In his head, Dream is telling him he did a good job today, in that passive, emotionless tone, over and over. In his head, Dream is telling him to make the choice. In his head, Dream drags him away, though the pouring rain. </p><p> </p><p>He can’t help but feel sick. Did he do the right thing? The plastic feels cold beneath his fingertips)</p><p> </p><p>On Friday, he struggles to get up, but he’d been awake for hours (the dreams won’t let him stay asleep anyway). The silence is louder than Tommy had ever been, and it sounds like static in the form of loss. The walls are barely any lower. L’manberg is alway quiet. He struggles to attach his clip-on tie. He sleeps in the office instead. His back (he’s so, so tired, he can’t get anything out of sleeping anymore, it’s all just horrible visions) pays for it.</p><p><em>How do you know when it's all too much</em>, he whispers into the quiet. Nobody answers.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>2 (3).</p><p>The walls are coming down. They’re coming down, slowly, since obsidian takes forever to break, but they’re halfway gone. The walls are coming down, and Dream doesn’t wear his armor in the confines of L’manberg. As far as it gets, this is solidarity from the man they need it most from.</p><p> </p><p>Barely a week passes before he cannot take the absence anymore, before it finally sinks in. Reality sets in and he regrets it.</p><p> </p><p>He exiled Tommy. (He turns around to tell Tommy something. He’s not there. He never is.)</p><p> </p><p>He <em> exiled </em> Tommy. (The paperwork under the pile that officiated it had eventually surfaced again, before he shoveled it under the next one.)</p><p> </p><p>He exiled <em> Tommy </em>. (He thumbs the grooves of the disk that he keeps deep in his enderchest, far away from everything out. The discs don’t matter, he thinks, but he can’t help but hold the one he has close.)</p><p> </p><p>He dreams. (My first decree, he says, looking over a crowd. Is to <em> revoke </em> . The citizenship. Of <em> Tommyinnit </em>! There is a beat. Quackity asks, what about Wilbur? He turns to Quackity. Quackity has been replaced with Dream. Wilbur is pressing a button. </p><p> </p><p>He turns back. The crowd has dissipated. Nobody is left, except for Tommy, who is being dragged away into the dark. Make it hurt, Schlatt says, and he smiles, his golden eyes in the dark, and then there’s Technoblade, but this time, all righteous fury and mania and there are withers, and it is loud, and there is a rocket pointed between his eyes-) </p><p> </p><p>He <em> exiled Tommy </em> , he realizes, when he wakes up (he doesn’t sleep that much anymore, anyway). There is dried drool from the corner of his mouth, and a red spot from where his face was implanted into the wood of the desk, and his hair is a mess, but he doesn’t care, he <em> exiled Tommy. </em></p><p> </p><p>It’s raining, when he runs to the walls, whatever remains of them. It’s dark, and L’manberg has always looked strange at night, with their structures forming contorted shadows on the ground, and now with the walls encircling them, like the rockiest fish bowl ever, everything is covered in a sheen of darkness. He runs and runs until he is standing in front of the van, behind the place where he stood then, and then he drops to his knees, and he is screaming, i change my mind, come back, i don’t care about the walls, you matter, you’re supposed to be here, with me, don’t go, i’m sorry - but the rain drowns him out.</p><p> </p><p>There are no take backs, after all.</p><p> </p><p>(Tubbo is the biggest liar in the whole wide world. He lies to everybody, about everything. He lies to himself. if they didn’t already have a pants guy on the server, Tubbo might’ve been called pants-on-fire. But he isn’t and he’s not. But what he is is the most lying liar to ever lie. A soldier, their friend, a trusted spy. </p><p> </p><p>He is the greatest pretender that L’manberg has ever seen, and he will go on like that until the day he breaks. Sometimes he speculates on how he’ll go, when he can’t go on any longer. It won’t be an explosion, like Wilbur, or glass shattering, like Schlatt. It’ll be the tug of a loose thread, unraveling away. </p><p> </p><p>And when he does, the day he does, he thinks there’ll be nothing left of him after. And as time goes on, and the silence grows like chasms, it’s all he hopes.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>3.</p><p>Quackity announces that the Butcher army should go after Technoblade soon, considering the pig’s month of silence. Fundy agrees, vicariously (he’s an orphan, and Techno hates orphans, a running joke, but now) Tubbo agrees, and bites his tongue on anything further. Ranboo gives them all shifty looks. </p><p> </p><p>“Guys, do you really think we should wage conflict with him…. So soon?” Ranboo offers, a counter to the whole organization. Quackity and Fundy turn on him quickly, though, and they’re fighting, but all Tubbo could think was, ‘is <em> this </em> what I gave him away for?’ </p><p> </p><p>A bitterness, an anger, of some sorts, rose up in his chest, and his throat tightened. <em>I gave him away like cards so that I could keep this place safe. If not peace, then what was the point of it? What was the point for anything?</em></p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Why won’t any of you listen to me?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>But, he stays silent. He remembers the last time he contested their wishes.</p><p> </p><p>Outside, there is a wanted poster of Technoblade, standing regally, stoic and defiant in the photo, underneath, written: <b>Wanted: Dead or Alive.</b> With the way their meetings kept going, Tubbo felt like it was really going more one way than the other.</p><p> </p><p>(Tommy once told him, his brother was a warrior. Stoic and fierce, cutting down the even most valiant of enemies, deadly skilled and determined beyond reason, hard-working and efficient. Of course, the stories usually tended to be told much more excitedly, much more exaggerated (to a degree), much more mystical and heroic. </p><p> </p><p>Technoblade, for all his mysterious air and regal wear, was also flawed, like the rest of them. He often came off as stoic, with his monotonous voice and flat expression, but he was just as much of a man as the rest of them. He teased Tommy, who in turn, fired up and railed against him, brothers in jest. He gave them criticism on their forms, and taught them tricks he himself had learned. He worked hours on gathering resources from the mines, hours on the farms growing food, hours in the nether gathering blazes and the other things he wouldn’t elaborate on but they never asked nor guessed about (and maybe they should’ve, but then, he was just Technoblade, and they didn’t even think he’d ever turn on them, because they were tired of people turning on them, tired of being the adults, so they never even-), and he built all the railings in Pogtopia, because Wilbur was tired of staying safe, and they all could see it in the way he held himself.</p><p> </p><p>They say never meet your heroes. Tubbo never understood that, then, until there was a crossbow between his eyes with a firework loaded between them, and no thousand apologies could ever take back the moment between them then. He forgave Techno, even then, but something between them had been broken the moment the Blade had put one between his eyes.</p><p> </p><p>A good warrior strikes fear into the hearts of men, even off the battlefield. An ally is not your friend - they don’t have to be. A hero doesn’t always do good things. Tubbo could attestify to these, in the form of every firework burst he flinched at, every colorful nightmare he awoke from, afterwards.)</p><p> </p><p>The posters are everywhere, plastered on every wall. Cold eyes follow him across the path, as he leaves the meeting that condemns that man to death, mocking in their unempathetic gaze.</p><p> </p><p>(“Techno is on our side!” they said, frenziedly, when he’d just joined. </p><p> </p><p>“Techno won’t hurt you,” he says, calmly, briefly before the festival started.</p><p> </p><p>“Techno is on our side!” they said, frantically, when the explosions finally settled and the withers arose.</p><p> </p><p>“Techno needs to die,” Quackity says, boldy, pointing to their hastily made “Propaganda”, and the other two are contemplative in the quiet.</p><p> </p><p>Techno, come up to the stage, Schlatt says, when he’s tired and it’s all he can hear in the silence. Make it hurt.</p><p> </p><p>Techno is silent to all of them, everyone, even in Tubbo’s dreams. He just watches on, cold eyes, like the posters plastered around L’manberg.</p><p> </p><p>He makes it hurt.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Interlude: 1.</p><p>One afternoon, Dream invites himself to Tubbo’s lunch break, while the walls have just started coming down. He had been playing Fundy in a match, but the fox had left him with the half-finished chessboard halfway through, claiming some “family issues” needed to be taken care of. So Dream sat himself at the other end of the table, and offered a match. Tubbo smiles, gently (and tries his best to ignore the smell of smoke and the gunpowder stains on the other man’s coat, he doesn’t want to think about the implications-), and agrees to a match.</p><p> </p><p>They set up the board. Pawns are traded, a knight for a bishop, a bishop for a rook. Tubbo castles his king. Dream leaves his king in its original spot. They swap more pieces. Dream promotes a pawn. Finally, Tubbo sees an opening. He sacrifices his queen, and announces, “Check.” </p><p> </p><p>Dream looks at the board, fingers on the king, his (burnt, why is it burnt, wait, you don’t want to know) sleeve accidentally knocking over some nearby pawns. “I think you mean, checkmate, Tubbo,” he chuckles. “Good game.”</p><p> </p><p>(It’s only later that Tubbo realizes that Dream could’ve moved his queen to victory at any point in the game.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Interlude: 2.</p><p>Ghostbur rarely stops by, these days. It makes sense, that he’s busy with Tommy across the seas. It makes sense, because Tubbo thinks he has become something different to Ghostbur. Something uncomfortable.</p><p> </p><p>(Can’t Tommy come back? the ghost asks, in that thin, reedy voice wilbur <em> never </em> spoke to with anyone, except maybe Fundy. no, tubbo tells him, every time. whenever dream shows up [always smelling of smoke nowadays, it’s hard to breathe around him], he always says no right away. then, as if to emphasize the fact that he caught tubbo hesitating, he reminds tubbo that he could’ve asked for more. tubbo smiles, a fake smile that’s plastered and wide, and thanks dream [for what? for not taking <em> more </em> from him?]. ghostbur does not catch the hint, and asks again, and again, and again-</p><p> </p><p>- sometimes, he suspects that ghostbur isn’t asking out of an inability to remember. </p><p> </p><p>eventually, when ghostbur asks him, aren’t you friends? he’s sure of it.)</p><p> </p><p>Ghostbur, this time, brings him a gift. It’s a compass, with “<em> Your Tommy,” </em> engraved on it. “So you two can find each other wherever you are on this bitch of an earth,” he says, and Tubbo nearly cries. He doesn’t, but his voice wavers when he thanks Ghostbur for the gift, and they both know what he’s not doing.</p><p> </p><p>It points over the docks and straight out into the water, and Tubbo wants to follow the line. He doesn’t, but oh, he does want to. </p><p> </p><p>But Dream says he wouldn’t be welcome there. He’s been saying that for weeks, now. </p><p> </p><p>(Tubbo is starting to believe him.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Interlude: 3.</p><p>Here’s a secret everybody knows. Tubbo misses Tommy. He’ll never really say it outloud - in a similar manner to how Tommy would never admit to anything emotional (“Tommyinnit never cries!” He crows once, in the same manner as Technoblade’s <em> Technoblade never dies. </em> Tubbo does, though, but he’ll never admit to it either.), but you can tell he misses him anyway, in the way that he lingers at the site of every one of Tommy’s builds in L’manberg.</p><p> </p><p>Here’s a secret everybody knows - if you can’t find Tubbo in the office, or in his bee farm, you can always find him in one of Tommy’s old places. He’ll be in Tommy’s house, with an odd look on is face as he touches the red granite blocks (it’s such a stupid block, Tommy states passionately. Tubbo can’t help but snort-); he’ll be standing by the bench, leaning against the tree, but never seated on the bench itself, never playing music, but maybe, if you look closely, you’ll find that he’s still holding a vinyl, delicately tracing his fingers along the plastic grooves of the disc.</p><p> </p><p>If you can’t find him at all, he’s probably atop Tommy’s intimidation tower. You know, the one that stretches for miles upon miles upward, with no end in sight and no intention on stopping anytime soon. Even though you’d think he’d be by Tommy’s house more often, most of the time he can be found here, standing in the clouds with his eyes closed.</p><p> </p><p>(Tubbo climbs the tower, step by step. It’s a long walk, but he manages to get to the top eventually. The air is thin. It’s hard to breath, but not in the same way bursts of color make it. The clouds pass him by and he can feel their fine mist on his fingers, on his face. It’s daylight now, but here, it’s freezing cold. His cheeks burn with the bite of the wind.</p><p> </p><p>In French, there is a word, “L’appel du vide”, that describes a ‘call to the void’, the moment on a ledge when you stand far above the ground and you get the urge to jump off. Just so see how it’d feel. Just to fly into the void. </p><p> </p><p>It’s not so much as that desire as it is the freedom that Tubbo feels now. He wonders if this was why Tommy came up here often during his probation, so far above watching, judging eyes and so high up in the air - the taste of freedom in the form of cold cloud mist on his face and tightening lungs. So far away from responsibility.</p><p> </p><p>He could see the appeal.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>4: penultimate finale.</p><p>The day the Butcher army set things in motion, all Tubbo can think about is the compass in his pocket. </p><p> </p><p>They go to interrogate Phil for Techno’s current location, and while the man is silent, loyal to his son (why aren’t you like that for tommy, a bitter part of tubbo gripes. you have no clue how much tommy needed you then, when he was forced to be ‘the bigger man’. he needs you now, too, and look where you are), they dig through his chests and find the compass. It has the same glimmer to it as Tommy’s compass does, and he finds himself saying, albeit involuntarily, “This compass will lead to Technoblade.” </p><p> </p><p>In the moment he says it, he regrets it. Phil turns to him, face sheet white, eyebrows furrowed in the beginning stages of rage and grief all at once (you already took one of my sons, Phil tells him with a glance towards where Ghostbur had been last, with a lead on a sheep named Friend.you already took away one of my sons, how dare you try and take another. </p><p> </p><p>Tubbo doesn’t think Phil means Tommy, in this moment, but <em> ohhh </em>, he wants him to. he knows what Tommy wanted from Phil the most, and now, on behalf of that desire, Tubbo thinks it isn’t fair, that even now, there’s still a great divide between those who need it and those who get it. He thinks it’s unfair, that Phil will never side with Tommy out of his own initiative. </p><p> </p><p>He thinks that it’s unfair, that Phil won’t get mad at him for what he did to Tommy.)</p><p> </p><p>They find Techno’s house easily - it’s practically right next where Dream reported that Logsteadshire was. It takes every inch of Tubbo’s will not to pull out his own compass and follow its arrow, a little more south, he knows it. It’s all he can think about. (It ticks away quietly in his pocket, <em> click click click </em> as the gears rotate and the arrow points elsewhere).</p><p> </p><p>Techno is waiting for them, sword in hand. He hesitates.</p><p> </p><p>(Techno is waiting, crossbow in hand. He burns.)</p><p> </p><p>They exchange words, insults, and then they’re fighting. They’re horribly outclassed, and Fundy knows it, and Quackity knows it, and he knows it, and Techno knows it - but the fight lasts longer than it should, almost toyingly. Up until Quackity puts a sword to a horse's neck, and Technoblade forfeits the win.</p><p> </p><p>(In the brief moment they all took to look over at Quackity, at the horse, Tubbo glimpses something furious, something vicious, something bloody pass through Technoblade’s face. It’s the same feral rage Tommy had expressed once, when Henry had been threatened the first time. </p><p> </p><p>It’s the same expression Techno makes briefly at Tubbo’s impromptu inauguration, where in the shadows, Dream retreats from his position behind him, having said enough. </p><p> </p><p>Moments later, there is color streaking towards him.)</p><p>They bring him back to L’manberg to enact their final plan for him. Quackity had set up the machine, and it’s clear Sam had been rubbing off of the other man, since it was surprisingly well-constructed and sturdy. On the top, is an anvil.</p><p> </p><p>(He is more than just a weapon, Phil told Tubbo once in an attempt to better explain his more…  independent anarchist son, of the three. He’s also the anvil that forges it, that sharpens it. Tubbo does not snort, because it’d be incredibly rude, but he can’t help the thought that passes through his head. <em> Yeah, okay. </em></p><p> </p><p>To be fair, Phil wasn’t asking for forgiveness on techno’s behalf in the manner that Wilbur did then (listen, he was just- just peer pressured. you know what tubbo, it doesn’t matter. if you’ve got a problem with him, take it up in the pit. we need the blade), but he’s still miffed by the effort.</p><p> </p><p>When the anvil drops, and Phil’s screaming at them from inside his house, he couldn’t think of a more ironic analogy.)</p><p> </p><p>And then Techno gets up, head bloody, but entirely whole. Fundy is shrieking, Quackity is screaming in rage. He turns to him, before breaking out of the cage. Tubbo moves instinctively, back, but it doesn’t entirely dodge the right hook thrown his way, and he can hear the sickening <em> crunch </em> , and his nose is throbbing. Phil is laughing at them, laughing at them all, all <em> did you really think you could kill him? Technoblade never dies </em> , and he impulsive nocks an arrow at him, shouting back <em> shut up, phil! Shut up shut up shut up - </em>(he’s shouting at tommy, at the court, and tommy’s voice is grating, so loud, so intrusive, and he’s shouting at him now shut up! Shut up shut up shut up-).</p><p> </p><p>Technoblade makes a break for it, but Tubbo does not follow. The compass weighs heavy and hot in his pocket. It’s all he can think about, following the arrow. Even when Quackity respawns, his lip bearing a new, long scar, a snarl playing on his lips, as he plans through their next murder plot, as Fundy fiddles with the stick in his mouth, with Niki close behind, as Ranboo gives him a funny (resentful, bitter) look and leaves with the memory book in hand, it buzzes in his mind louder than the silence.</p><p> </p><p>He missed Tommy. He missed Tommy, so so much, and despite what Dream had said (he doesn’t want you there, tubbo, he hates you), despite the apprehension (what if he does hate him? what if tubbo was wrong?), he missed Tommy, Tommy, <em> Tommy </em> . Tommy was everywhere, and he wasn’t, in the form of the cobblestone paths (oh, classic tommy), in the form of rude signs (oh <em> tommy </em>), in the spinning motions of the compass that go unnoticed in his haste.</p><p> </p><p>The next thing he knows, he’s stepping through the portal.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>yeah sorry for making you read this Big Doozy but there were many, Many™ things i wanted to add so, uh, not sorry???? haha, tell me what you thought! adskjksjhd;adshkjl motif,,,, i eat the comments</p><p>ALSO: just wanna note-  if the festival (to kill dream???) happens before chapter three comes out, im probably not going to write it in unless i end up thinking whatever goes down fits the plot. here is your canon-divergence notice!</p><p>EDIT: alright me from the past, we aint gonna do that... we're built different now</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. what you have</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>tubbo returns from logsteadshire</p><p>(or a penultimate conclusion to a horrible broadway, told by stages)</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>So uh, this is very. very long. not supposed to be this long. I was going to finish the whole fic here, but 8k words made me reconsider, so you guys get a: depressing interlude! hurray!</p><p>(Tw: Implied Suicide, Suicidal Thoughts. Ask if you think I need to put more warnings here, but I think these two cover it...?)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>0. </p><p>
  <strong>[ what you were ]</strong>
</p><p>Phil had liked Tubbo. He remembered the sweet, smiling boy that had tagged along with Tommy everywhere, quiet, agreeable, mild-mannered on his own - and the two of them had strewn chaos wherever they went. He wouldn’t say they brought out the best in each other, but they brought out something… something wondrous, child-like glee, curious and explorative, the two of them. </p><p>But the Tubbo who brought him the ankle monitor, his eyes dark with exhaustion, his face set like stone, watching expectantly as he put it on… the Tubbo who had taken the compass and recognized it for what it was (he could see it in his face, the way it lit up with remembrance, the way his hand edged towards his pocket towards very his own) and then went on to explain, to the very men (one of which his very own grandson, the last living remnant of wilbur) who sought to kill his son, what it could do-</p><p>This Tubbo, who called him Mr. Minecraft coldly, his smile more pasted to his face than not, who was able to trade away his friends like cards in an effort to win the game, who gave up more than he could afford, who flinched at every creeper blast, who became the president that nobody asked for, for a country nobody needed, making efforts that nobody cared for-</p><p>[<em> the Tubbo who had stood passively as they trapped his son, weighing the anchor heavy over his head, and angled the lever for the drop, and he couldn’t do anything but scream, scream helplessly, as he is unable to stop another one of his sons from dying, Wilbur’s blood staining his hands always, always, and now, the anchor slams down, Techno’s head covered in the same vicarious red liquid, dribbling on the floor, and he’s wailing, and Tubbo is far, far away, his eyes staring at the mess, vacantly- </em>]</p><p>Compared to the other Tubbo, who had called him Mr. Minecraft nervously, his smile gentle and rare, who cherished his friends more than anything, who gave up more than he could afford, who spooked at every noise in the dark but faced it ahead boldly anyway, because he had Tommy by his side, who looked up with sparkling eyes and asked, because his efforts were cherished, once-</p><p> </p><p>[<em> He made a comment on it once, privately, when the ankle monitor weighed heavily on his foot, when his house, his place of imprisonment, became too stifling, when all he wanted was to leave this wretched place. The quiet ate into every corner, the streets barely walked on, everything in an absence drawn into a droning lull, and L’manberg was beautiful in the way unwalked snow in the arctic was beautiful - pristine and glimmering and appearing whole, and yet overwhelmingly cold. </em></p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “Things have changed, Wil…not for the better.”  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Wilbur… no, Ghostbur, now, (don’t forget, he’s Ghostbur because you unmade him that way, and now you must live with it) paused, and asked, “I thought Tubbo was a good guy?” </em>
</p><p> </p><p><em> Maybe once, he was, maybe once, he had been, but now… ““…Not anymore.” </em>]</p><p> </p><p>He thinks about a boy in a box, his face shining with a joyful curiosity, stemming from an innocence he held onto for many, many years. He thinks about the boy in the suit, lips stretched in a friendly smile, his eyes betraying something much more worn out, something less innocuous. They are the same person, and yet, they are not.</p><p>This Tubbo, he did not like so much.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>[ what you are ]</strong>
</p><p>Dream likes Tubbo. It is evident, in what he says to Quackity, when Quackity is finally caught with the pieces of Eret’s throne. Dream, voice low, angrily, tells him this: “Tubbo would never - never in a million years do what you just did. You know who would? Schlatt. You know who would? Wilbur.” He pauses, and adds, “You know who would? Tommy.”</p><p>Quackity is quick to come to his own defence, of course, words have never been hard to come by - but, the thought still lingers. Of course Tubbo would never do what he did (and maybe being compared to Schlatt and Wilbur in the same breath stung a little, but who cared? They were powerful men, anyway, and they were the ones who commanded instead of being commanded, and maybe that was what his issue with Tubbo really was about, then. </p><p>It wasn’t that Tubbo emulated Schlatt in his cutthroat practice of cutting people lose left and right, no (and honestly, he was surprised Tubbo could even do that, and he doesn’t know what to think, now, because if Tubbo could easily cut his friend, his best friend, loose that easily, then what did that mean for the rest of them? What did it mean for him?) - it wasn’t that Tubbo was in any manner ignorant to his cabinet (and now, he thinks Tubbo listens a little too well, but that’s not on him, if Tubbo compensated for the guilt in this manner). </p><p>It was ultimately, that Tubbo wasn’t like the previous presidents. Quackity might not have liked either of the prior presidents, they were, in fact, power-hungry individuals with a great deal of intelligence and charisma on their sides, but…  at least he could admit that they were powerful in that manner too. (And he wants to be powerful, like them. Neither of them were good in combat, necessarily (like him), and yet Dream hesitated when dealing with them. He wants that, too.)</p><p>There was nothing essentially selfish about Tubbo, for anything, and thus, he had none of their drive, none of their flair. There was nothing powerful about him either. He was easily influenced. He hopelessly compromised, always giving away anything, everyone taking from him everything. </p><p> </p><p>He was just a boy in a suit.</p><p> </p><p>(at least he listened. Quackity could be satisfied with that, for now.)</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>
  <strong>[ what you’ve become ]</strong>
</p><p>Tommy still liked Tubbo. Technoblade knows this, in the way the bedraggled boy’s hand always drifted in the quiet moments, towards his pocket, where he kept that photo. It’s in the shape of his movements, too, expectant of someone behind him, the way he’ll turn to the empty space and his smile would falter in the brief moment, before he’d continue without comment. Even with the tirade of denials he’d offer, when Tubbo was mentioned in context, it held the same weight as Tommy saying Dream was his friend - it wasn’t true unless he meant it, and even then…</p><p>Techno, however, had not much to say about the boy who had been his brother’s best friend. Government corrupts, and who could’ve been the best example of this but the very boy who’d sent his friend away for it, who’d bargain with the likes of Dream for it, who’d trade away his values for it?</p><p>(He remembers how Tubbo had stared at him, kneeling on the floor of his execution cage, where Quackity and Fundy had jeered at him. An empty gaze. He did not so much as move until Techno had landed a solid punch in his face. He felt the break, but Tubbo had just fallen to the floor. He hadn’t complained then, about the lack of retaliation - it was easier to escape him than the bloodthirsty cries behind him, and so he took the opportunity.)</p><p>Tubbo was the best example of everything wrong with L’manberg, because he was good, he <em> was </em> good and look what had happened to him. Look what had happened to Wilbur. They’d only end up the same way.</p><p>(The room was filled with skulls for a reason, after all.)</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>
  <strong>[ yourself ]</strong>
</p><p>Tubbo does not like himself. He is the worst president they’ve ever had, and he knows that even though no one will admit it to him, they think the same. It’s not that he’s a particularly bad president, no, it’s just…</p><p>He’s not like the other presidents. And oh, they might call him Schlatt behind his back (or directly to his face, unashamedly bold and righteous), and ohh, they might reminiscent about the good days with Wilbur behind his back (or directly to him, gently nostalgic and then they’d pause and go, <em> oh don’t worry tubbo, you’re doing a good job </em>, placatingly), but the thing is he’s not either of them. </p><p>In the end, they were also selfish - that was true. The last two presidents were powerful, that was also true.</p><p>Tubbo is neither of those things. He is not like any of them - his grandiose scheme is to fix the effects of theirs. His ultimate plan is to maintain peace. He sacrifices his own vices to serve a country that’s passed hands like a hot potato. He is their most selfless president.  He is been more powerless than them all. He is a boy in an all-too big suit. </p><p>He sheds his identity like a snake - from a supporter to a soldier to a spy. He is the greatest performer L’manberg has ever seen. It is a show, a play, and he must perform to the whims of men like Dream and Schlatt and Wilbur, and never ever falter, showstopper. </p><p>(sometimes, he wants to stop. Sometimes, he wants to pull down the curtains, rip them off, in a feat of fearlessness he’ll never admit to, wants to stop the show, curtains call, show over, the end. </p><p>he wants to beg them, scream at them, <em> what do you want from me? Haven’t you taken enough? Are you happy yet? Are you satisfied? Didn’t you get what you wanted? Can I call the curtains yet? </em></p><p>he asks them <em> how can I help you, is there something I can do </em> instead, and he wishes he could’ve pressed the button. He’d rather them all hate him so that they’d ask nothing more of him, he wants to be allowed to be selfish but he’s only allowed to be self-destructive, and so, the thread unravels. He wishes he could undo everything up until the moment in the van that then they had made their first mistake, but now, he is stuck with the results of every moment after, and he is left with the remains of himself.)</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>It is evident, in the way he looks, like the rug has been pulled from under his feet, stumbling, fallen and ashamed, ghostly pale and broken-hearted when he returns from the portal. Nothing will change his mind after that point.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>1. </p><p>Tommy’s exile is not a swift motion. It is slow, it is terrible, it is an act in three parts, for a horrible play which foretells the story of a decline that will last throughout the rest of the narrative. </p><p>His death, however, is a swift motion. It is a final one, a finalmost resolution, a white flag in the air that went unseen until the moment it was raised. It is fast, it is terrible, and it happens suddenly, a narrative concluded in the most harrowing manner. </p><p>The first thing he notices, upon exiting the portal, is the smell of smoke. It’s strong even in the pouring rain, it’s everywhere, it fills his lungs with every breath he takes (and in those moments, all he can see is L‘Manberg in pieces, he’s being thrown back, the blast taking him with it, the burning smell, the firework pointed in his face and -), sulphuric and charred, something like gunpowder. </p><p>It smells familiar (you know you’ve smelled it before, the gunpowder on Wilbur’s hands, lingering on his ragged overcoat, on Dream’s sleeves as he handed him those papers, lingering under the piney, earthy scent that he’d grown long accustomed to-), and then his eyes adjust to the faint torchlight.</p><p>The sight registers. He takes a hesitant step forward, and then he can’t stop walking, his head swiveling side to side in a motion of confusion, trying to take it all in. Everything had been destroyed - the ground had been ripped up in a violent manner, torn to bits, everything muddy from the rain. The structures weren’t spare either - a tent, or what was left of one, dangled from the remaining poles with the ground below it caved in, water beginning to fill the pit, cobblestone and wooden buildings with chunks taken out of them, their sides scorched and blast marks mar the ground and the walls around him.</p><p>The scene is almost familiar, down to the humongous crater up ahead, wide, deep, dark. It swallows him whole as he steps forward, there is a shadow that befalls on him, one he hadn’t noticed before, but as he got closer, in the midst of the rain, it becomes more clear and-</p><p> </p><p>and-</p><p> </p><p>And he looks up.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p>2.</p><p>(Here is an unspoken fact: everyone hurts somebody else, eventually. </p><p>Sometimes, it’s intentional (<em>it was never meant to be, they say, their eyes glimmering behind black glasses, and they are all trapped now)</em>, a solid blow in the crack of a faltering structure to lead to its crumbling (- <em>and he can’t look at lime green the same way, not without freezing, his heart racing at a hundred miles per hour, and that voice echoing in his head - [i’m your friend, you’re alone - they don’t visit you, sorry doesn't cut it, you’re not alone - they visited you, everything is better now that you’re here, you only have me-] and he hates it, the confusion even though he knows that he was only here to watch him, he hates that, he’s been … humiliated, like this</em>) and sometimes, it’s not. </p><p>Sometimes it’s an accident (<em>“I can tell you’re afraid-,” he’s saying, eyes wide and glassy and unseeingly angry, and yes, he is afraid, afraid of what’s in front of him, because that isn’t his brother, but he has nobody else in this empty, empty cave, but that isn’t Wil-</em>), </p><p>and sometimes it’s an accident (<em> and he’s trembling, because he knows the cacophony of the voices that exist and all the ones that don’t are demanding, demanding, demanding, and he knows he will give in, and the rocket launcher is raised, and even though it’s pointless, he knows it, the president knows it [smiling, viciously, do you know what happens to traitors, T-], the one before him knows it [i’ll make it painless… and colorful, he offers, but-], he’s pleading “Tech-no- </em>),</p><p>and sometimes it’s an accident (<em> -and they are silent for once, from where they sit in the minecart, and the smoke dissipates from where the body was, revealing a remnant of what was once a treasured friend, and it wasn’t on purpose, they didn’t plan this, but they want what was theirs back, so- </em>), </p><p>and sometimes it’s an accident, but somebody gets hurt. It’s just the nature of things, by this point, that somebody always gets hurt.</p><p> </p><p>Here is another unspoken fact: Tubbo has been ruined by them all, everybody inevitably, and now, he has ruined somebody else.)</p><p><br/>
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</p><p> </p><p>1 and ½.</p><p>A tower.</p><p> </p><p>It’s… less of a tower, upon a second look, but a pillar. A one-way pillar that stretches out up into the heavens, uncoordinated in its formation, made out of desperation and dirt, and it doesn’t register at first, but when it does, oh, <em> oh </em>, no - he wouldn’t, would he?</p><p>He scrabbles over the scorched, torn-up craters and displaced rubble to the base of the tower, his eyes wide, searching, searching for anything, really. Anything, any sign of movement, he’s calling out “Tommy? Tommy?!” and nobody answers except the sound of pouring rain, and his shoes squelch in the mud, and he’s at the base of the tower and there is nothing. </p><p> </p><p>There is nothing at all.</p><p> </p><p>“Surely,” he croaks, and he’s never been more broken before. “Surely not.”</p><p> </p><p>Surely not, he thinks, surely Tommy wouldn’t have done that. Tommy was an angry person, unapologetic and prideful. It defined everything about him - the whole <em> disc fiasco </em> , the cocky challenge he issued Dream in the penultimate act in L’manbergs independence, the entirety of the election, even <em> Pogtopia </em> hadn’t even beaten the self-righteousness out of him.</p><p>He had been angry, the day Tubbo had called for him to be taken away. He had been angry for all of the other things too. He’d never do something like this, surely.</p><p>He hesitates, and he thinks. The tower had already been built. The place was ruined. Tommy had been denying visitors for weeks, he had been alone with nobody but his dead brother who had died by his own demand, nobody but Dream, who never would let them have peace, nobody but himself and everybody turning away on his mind, with Tubbo exiling him on his mind, and-</p><p>(sure, Tommy’s anger defined him, in the way the mask defined Dream. Underneath, there is more. Underneath, Tubbo saw the desperation in the way he had reached for his disc, in the way his eyes teared up momentarily when the arrow had penetrated his heart, the shock on his face as they had lost the election, the confusion and disbelief when Schlatt had issued his first decree, the tired, tired look that only got worse as the exile went on and Wilbur fell further.</p><p>He had been angry, the day, the day Tubbo had called for him to be taken away, but more than that, he had been hurt. His voice cracked when he had called out to his friend, only to be rebuffed by the president, only to be dragged away by the one person who had never been merciful on either of them.)</p><p>“Surely not.”  He rasps, his knees in the mud, his clothes soaked and the cold seeping into his bones, and he can’t tell if the shivering is from the chill or not, if the water running down his face is front the rain or not, but it is ‘surely’ a fact that he can’t take back. The air escapes his lungs in one swift exhale, and now he is breathless.</p><p> </p><p>He can’t breathe. He will never be able to breathe again, he thinks. </p><p>He inhales. The smoke fills his lungs and he lets it linger.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>(It lingers, too, later that night, in the form of the dreams that come in one after another like train cars. He lingers in it, the smoke, it’s everywhere, he’s standing in that damned yellow box, and Schlatt is speaking, Techno is apologising, there is a crossbow pointed between his eyes, but he can’t hear anything but the ringing, can’t see anything but Tommy on the building, arms outstretched. </p><p>He reaches out for his friend, and his hand points involuntarily, and his mouth moves involuntarily, and he is listening to himself say, those words, the same ones, and then Tommy disappears from the ledge-</p><p>It’s his fault, in the end. He never should have let Tommy go, because he did, and then Tommy let himself go too.)</p><p><br/>
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</p><p> </p><p>3.</p><p>Technoblade often pointed fingers at parallels, parallel narratives, analogies - in the end, all it did was paint a picture of what he saw and what he expected. It came in the form of assigning Tommy the position of the doomed hero, fated to betrayal and death. (And, in the end, Tubbo only affirmed that fate, in the form of a simple sentence, a decision to a choice, a finger pointing out the border, the walls lined, his eyes red with held-back tears and frustration. In the end, Tubbo only ensured his death, the moment he turned his back on his best friend, and told him to fend for himself. </p><p>In the end, Tubbo might as well have been Lycomedes, his hands on Theseus’s back in the form of an ultimate betrayal. </p><p>In the end, Tubbo remained Sisyphus, endless rolling a boulder up the hill, a redundant task, thankless and pointless, and yet he kept rolling. In the end, Tubbo became Atlas, and the world burdened itself upon his shoulders. In the end, he was the Aegus to Tommy’s Thesues, but the thing he destroys is not himself.</p><p>Not yet.)</p><p> </p><p>But more than that - Wilbur, even before it all, had always been fond of literary themes. It was only in his decline, did he begin to favor the term “Chekov’s gun”, which dictated the idea that essentially, “If in act one you have a pistol hanging on the wall, then it must fire by the last act” - or more generally put insignificant object that later turns out to be important later in the story. However, the button was never an insignificant object, and Wilbur, by that point, was always going to press it in the end.</p><p> </p><p>Tubbo had a better word for it: it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, what it was. A common literary theme - prevalent in the most known written works such as Shakespeare’s <em> Macbeth </em> and Sophocele’s <em> Oedipus the King </em> , and ultimately, their failure in stopping the destruction of L’manberg <em> . </em> The idea that the actions taken to prevent the fate foretold ultimately only lead to the confirmation of it. </p><p> </p><p>All of these are forms of foreshadowing, if you know what to look at. And if you looked, closely, fate foretold that L’manberg was never meant to last. Or better said, in the words of the first attempt at its destruction and then again in its final form, “it was never meant to be.”</p><p> </p><p>When Tubbo comes back through the portal, hand clutching a cold compass [arrow spinning, spinning more than it ever has before] and heart empty, the first thing he sees is the warm lighting and cheerful holiday decorations that speckle L’manberg. </p><p>Something echoes in him, somewhere in the hollowed-out remains of his form, as he stood before the soft torchlight, the festive decor, his L’manberg. Something like hatred. Like grief. Tommy would never get to see these celebratory efforts, because Tubbo gave him away in order to get to have them.</p><p>He thinks they never should have even bothered to rebuild the place. All it did was take, take, take and Tubbo had nothing left for it anymore.</p><p> </p><p>They say “it was never meant to be” or “it was meant to be”, their parodies and reclaims to the phrase once spoken by the first betrayer who sought its end. Ultimately, he thinks, it never should’ve been.</p><p> </p><p>(Both presidents before were right - everything became different, nothing stayed the same, the country was only a burden, and he was given its weight to carry. </p><p>Once he had wished he were Schlatt, who had the power to take it apart and remade it in the way he wanted it, but now he wishes Wilbur, hand trembling over the button, ready to decimate it all. </p><p>He is alone, now.)</p><p><br/>
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</p><p> </p><p>4.</p><p>He doesn’t leave the remains of Logsteadshire for a long, long time. Nothing moves him, not the faint growling of mobs, the flash of green, the hiss of a creeper, not the pouring sleet that seeps into his bones and his fingers numb, he stays there, kneeling in front of the pillar, like the world’s most unforgiving altar. </p><p>(<em> Surely not, no, he wouldn’t have, he couldn’t have, he could, he would, he was so so so alone, he did, he’s not coming back, he’s never coming back, he’s dead, dead and gone, you will never revel in his laughter again, you will never see him again and he’s never coming back, you should have never listened to dream, you should have visited anyway, you should have- </em>)</p><p>He barely notices when a pair of netherite boots crunch on the gravel behind him, the little stones rolling down the craters, not until someone is grabbing him by the shoulder, roughly spinning him around to face them, and he’s greeted with the vision of Dream’s porcelain mask. It mocks him, pristinely white and out of place in the midst of the wreckage and ruin. The beady eyes bore into him.</p><p>“Oh, Tubbo,” Dream begins. “What are you doing here?”</p><p>He smells like smoke. Everything does. (tubbo eyes the gunpowder dust on his sleeves)</p><p>“I…” he whispers, his voice cracking. He really didn’t know. Why had he come here? (why now?)</p><p>Dream tilts his head, his mask glimmering in the dawn light, a red reflection off the shiny ceramic. The smile cuts through him.</p><p>“I think you should go back,” he says, reaching out slowly, offering a hand (<em> the hand that had reached out and pulled them apart, that had dragged tommy away, the hand he had dictated and the hand he did not). </em> Tubbo does not move. He sights. “You have a country to get back to, Tubbo. Whatever happened here,” and here, he jerks his head around the campsite, “- you shouldn’t have been here anyway Tubbo, what did I say? He doesn’t want you here.”</p><p>(<em> he doesn’t want you there, dream tells him, every time he asks. he didn’t want him here, tubbo thinks, and thinks he should come sooner anyway. </em>)</p><p>When Tubbo makes no effort to get up, Dream reaches out and grips his arms (Tommy leading him off, his grip tight around his arm-), before harshly pulling him up. “You need to get a grip, Tubbo. You have a country to run.”</p><p>The country. Ah, the country - the running joke among them all. Make the boy president, and then make him dance to all of their tune, an endless caper. The joke had long run out on him, and now he resembled his country, made of craters, the cavern deep under him, a dark gaping maw of emptiness, and he was falling.</p><p>But he collects himself, enough to stagger towards the portal, past the remains of Logsteadshire, the tower behind him, and he pushes through the frame. Purple swirls in his vision, and the remains of Logsteadshire ripple out of existence. </p><p>(For a moment, he thinks he can see Tommy in the distance, looking back at him, his pale blue eyes wide, in the midst of the nauseating vortex, but moments later, the visage is replaced with the dark reds and blacks of the nether, an unfinished cobblestone path beneath his feet and hs hand is outstretched, reaching for nothing. He pulls it back, slowly.)</p><p>He stumbles through the portal blindly, his hands wrapped tight around his compass, his eyes red from countless tears (and he has countless more to spare), and he can barely hold himself together. He makes it down the path (the Prime Path, Tommy had exclaimed, and the two of them-), and then he trips. He feels a pair of hands grab him by his arms (Dream gripping his arms, pulling him away from his best friend’s last stand-) before he fell. He’s turned around, gently. His blurry vision pieces together a black-and-white face - It’s Ranboo.</p><p>Ranboo frantically searches his face, and asks, ““Are you okay?”</p><p>(he’s fine. He’s supposed to be fine, he’s always fine - but tommy wasn’t. tommy hadn’t been, tommy alone in logsteadshire, out in the middle of nowhere, banished by his very own friend, tubbo who had sent him away, tubbo who had sent him to die, no, he wasn’t fine, because tommy wasn’t fine because he was dead because tubbo had killed him-)</p><p>Tubbo opens his mouth to speak, his smile trembling, he knows what he’s going to say next. What he’s supposed to say. What he’s expected to say. He opens his mouth, and instead, everything he pushed down rises up in one motion (all his tragic feelings, all his anger, all his regret and loss, everything he had ever felt the moment he cut the tie between him and his best friend, from the moment he pointed his finger and demanded exile, every moment he put himself aside for everything and everyone around him, when instead he just wanted to be selfish for once, just once-), and his lip wobbles a little too long. A tightening of his throat and a short intake of breath, and a tear makes its way down his cheek. And then another one. And then tears are running down his face, and he can’t make them stop. He hiccups. “T-t-”</p><p>“... what happened, Tubbo…?” Ranboo asks hesitantly, his voice laced with concern, and Tubbo wipes his eyes fruitlessly.</p><p>“T-tommy, oh, <em> tommy </em> ,” he gasps, and it feels like the world has flipped from underneath him. Any semblance of composure escapes him, in this moment, because it hits him that Tommy is gone, for real this time. Tommy is dead, and he’s going to have to be the one to tell everybody, he’s the one who’s going to arrange the funeral, and there’s going to be an empty casket because Tommy is gone and his body is gone and Tubbo won’t even get to see him again in death, he’ll be saying goodbye to an empty casket - and he’ll never get to really say goodbye, and Tubbo never <em> wanted </em>to say goodbye, oh god-</p><p>“Tommy’s <em> dead </em> ,” he manages, voice trembling. If he says any more, he’ll unravel and he’ll never come back together (that’s a lie: he’s already unraveled. Tommy took the string with him when he left, and he’ll never weave it together again, because tommy is <em> dead </em> ). “He’s <em> dead </em> and it’s all my fault - i should’ve, i should’ve never, <em> never </em>, oh my god, I killed him, he’s dead, Ran- Ranboo he’s dead-”</p><p> </p><p>Arms encircle him and pull him into a hug. “Oh, Tubbo,” Ranboo says gently, and Tubbo curls into him.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>5.</p><p>He’s at the festival, on the stage. The colorful decorations dangle from various lampposts, hard effort paid off. Everyone looks up at him, with hesitant cheer, with the president standing behind, waiting, a golden gaze on his back, waiting. He grips the page, his speech, and opens his mouth to speak, and nothing comes out. He turns around. Schlatt is laughing, laughing behind him, and his hands press against wet concrete, and it gets harder and harder as he claws at the walls.The more he struggles, the more it sticks, and his feet are stuck in concrete, and he’s trying to free himself, and it’s pulling him under and he is drowning, and he is choking.</p><p>(He wakes up alone, on his desk, panting for air. The metal clip of his red clip-on tie had been pressed into his throat, leaving a dark, red mark. He takes off the clip, rubbing at the bruise. He looks at it.</p><p> </p><p>[Once, he had asked Fundy and Quackity if they ever had the same dreams, if they ever thought about their time together under the Schlatt Administration as the only working members of his cabinet. He gets an answer, but it’s not the one he wants. </p><p>In the end, he’s on the stage, Fundy staring up at him from where he had just given Schlatt the bucket, Quackity behind Schlatt asking him to reconsider after having just helped build the cage, both of them who had done nothing for him and neither of them who’d stayed for Schlatt, but both of them still in the nightmare all the same.</p><p>He doesn’t ask again.]</p><p> </p><p>Something rises up in his chest, when he looks at it. <em>A baby tie for a baby president, tommy would’ve said, but the voice that whispers it sounds a whole lot meaner than tommy</em>, <em>because</em> <em>tommy is dead now, because you killed him, and he’s never coming back.</em></p><p>He throws it at the wall and closes his eyes.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He is stuck in the ground, concrete around him, and he’s pleading but the words don’t make sense. Techno stands above him, his crossbow pointed at him, the firework loaded in the launcher as clear as he remembers it, all the little details down to the creases in the fold, he watches as the spark nears the end of the line, and it’s the end of the line for him. Techno tells him he’ll make it painless, but he doesn’t and he’s on fire inside and outside too, and a burst of color, he’s covering his face but it burns anyway, and it all goes dark. </p><p>(Ranboo wakes him up, because he won’t stop pleading, won’t stop mumbling, wouldn’t stop screaming, and asks him if he’s okay. He tells him <em> oh, it’s nothing (there’s nothing you can do) </em> ,  because once it was Tommy waking him up, asking him that, and once it was Tommy, who had screamed at Techno for him, because once Techno had told him <em> it’ll be as painless and colorful as possible </em>, but in the end, he can’t stop feeling the pain, can’t stop seeing the blackness, can’t stop remembering being torn to bits, even as Tommy quietly, patiently, pieces him back together. A joke, like the rest of his life, one of many. Burn his house, kill his pets, tell him lies. Make him president and then press the button. Make him president and then make him choose. </p><p>He pulls the lever. Wilbur presses the button. He says the line. Schlatt exiles his friend. He has collected all their worst pieces, all the dirt on their lettuce, and now he's been remade in their image by his own hands.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He’s at the festival, on the stage. The colorful decorations dangle from various lampposts, remnants of a failed effort. Everyone stares up at him pensively, with Dream standing behind him. He points a finger, and speaks, and it’s his voice, but not his words. He is Schlatt, and nobody is there. Tommy stands at the other end of the finger, eyes wide, with shock, with betrayal, and then he falls through the ground and Tubbo is alone on the stage.</p><p>(He wakes up at home. It’s dark out, and he’s alone. He doesn’t remember going home. To be fair, he doesn’t remember much of the day before either. Everything is foggy, now, slow. He finds himself lingering by the drawer, where he hides the old paperwork, where he found the bottle. He thinks he lost himself, the moment he walked through the portal. He is numb to the passage of time. He wants to go home.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It’s dark and nobody is there. If he knows if he were good, he wouldn't have been hurt. If he was brave, he wouldn’t be alone. He is a hollow shell, playing pretend. There is a pit inside of him, stretching from his breastbone to the depths of his stomach, and it runs cavernous like the crater underneath L’manberg and deep like a canyon, open and vulnerable to anyone who looks in. It cracks further, opens wide, the maw of one great monstrous beast and he’s falling inside, and the world shifts.</p><p>He’s falling, and the air is rushing past him, and his clothes flap with the wind. The ground draws nearer, and he can see sand. He can see craters, he can see Logsteadshire’s ruins, he can see Dream from the forest edge. He can see Tommy staring up at him. He stretches his arm out.</p><p>(He wakes up with his arms outstretched, and no one to reach. He holds himself instead, and cries. He cannot live in a world without Tommy, and Tommy is gone beyond his reach.</p><p>What is the dream, and what is real, at this point? He doesn’t know. He is conscious and he lives the nightmare.)</p><p><br/>
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</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>6.</p><p>The smell of smoke, in the office, is faint now. He rarely sees cigarette butts in the trash anymore, but he also rarely sees Fundy in L’manberg, so it might not have been a change in habits as so much as presence. </p><p>The smell of smoke around Dream is also faint, now. Which is why he doesn’t pay much attention to the man entering the room, when he does, because he’d become so accustomed to the powdery smoke that lingered around him, a dusty cloud that made him choke a little in its familiarity, and it takes the clearing of the throat to bring his attention to him.</p><p>Tubbo looks up from the paperwork (permits, which he didn’t need to finish, but if he left them alone, he’d have nothing else to occupy himself anymore, and then all he’d do is think about it, and he doesn’t quite want to, yet, because thinking about it hurt too much). “Hullo, Dream. Could I help you?” </p><p>He’s sure he looks terrible - he hadn’t left the office since he had arrived, his suit was surely wrinkled and the circles under his eyes likely dark, but he can’t find the energy to care about it much anymore, not even for Dream.</p><p>Dream shifts awkwardly, his expression blocked by the white porcelain mask. “I uh… I heard that…'' He hesitates, and says, gently, reassuringly, convincingly. “I’m sorry, Tubbo.”</p><p>(Dream shifts awkwardly, when he asks. “Look, he doesn’t want you there. He’s still upset over the whole thing. You know how he is.”</p><p>“But -” Tubbo begins, and Dream sighs. He pauses, and says, reassuringly, convincingly, “I’m sorry, Tubbo.”</p><p> </p><p><em> I’m sorry, Tubbo. </em>)</p><p> </p><p>Tubbo’s breath hitches. It’s the same voice. </p><p> </p><p>It’s the same voice.</p><p> </p><p>It’s the same voice. It’s the same voice. The same voice. The same voice-</p><p> </p><p>Dream looks at him, his masked face turning forward, tilted a little, to convey confusion. The stupid, smiley-faced mask, beady, unseeing black eyes staring straight at nothing in particular, a friendly smile empty and sharp like a knife, and Dream is a liar. When was Dream ever his friend? Had he ever thought that? Is that what Tom-he had thought, when it was just him and Dream alone out, in the middle of nowhere, when Dream had dragged him away, only to periodically return to the walls, only to build a tower, the place like smoke, Dream and smoke-</p><p>“Get out.” He says, quietly.</p><p>Dream startles. “What?”</p><p>“Get out.” He repeats. He gets up from his seat, fury rising in his chest. He tugs out the paperwork from under the pile, the one that would have officiated <em> everything, </em> which would’ve lawfully cut the ties between Tommy and L’manberg, which was worthless now, because he was <em> dead </em>, and he crumples it up into a ball, the staple biting into his hand from where it stuck out, and he throws it at Dream, who hardly dodges. </p><p>He hefts up a snowglobe, one of the few nice things Schlatt had in his office, and angles it at him. Here, Dream begins to back away. “Tubbo, wha-”</p><p>“<em> GET OUT! Get out get out, you killed him! You made me kill him, you made me chose, he’s dead, get OUT-” </em></p><p>Dream leaves. Water trickles down the door, pooling by the shattered glass.</p><p>Tubbo slumps in his seat and weeps.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>
  <span class="u"> Interlude 1. </span>
</p><p>He’d told Ranboo, once, that he’d be a good president, someday. Ranboo laughed and reassured him, “If I win the next election.”</p><p>Don’t worry, he assured him. You will. Ranboo looked at him, a little confused at how confidently he had said it. “Are you not going to run, Tubbo?”</p><p>Then, he had said, “Oh, I’m sure the people want a change.” (he had meant, he was so tired of fixing other people’s problems, of being the last choice for everything easy and first for everything hard, so tired of being pulled apart like strings)</p><p>Now, he laughs bitterly. “The day I voluntarily run for any position in the cabinet, Ranboo”, he says. “Is the day I die.”</p><p><br/>
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</p><p> </p><p>7.</p><p>He’s half expecting it, when Phil barges in through the door, his expression furious and eyes red, Ranboo behind him hesitantly reaching for him. “Sorry, Tubbo,” he says (and oh, is tubbo tired of the apologies). Phil looms over the other side of the desk, his dark wings spread like reckoning day.</p><p>“When are you going to tell me,” Phil begins, his eyes flashing. Tears are running down his cheeks, and he is not a pretty crier, but he’s not an ugly one either, like Tubbo is. Tubbo looks away, ashamed.</p><p>He knows it was his job, as both the president to his citizen, and as a friend to his son, to tell Phil the news, but he just… couldn’t say it. He tried to pull Phil aside, who’d been angry at him and all of them every day after the failed execution attempt, but he’d been rebuffed. And even when he tried, to say it out loud, to confirm the fact, he just couldn’t form the words. His voice wavered, and his throat tightened, and he couldn’t breathe enough to talk. So he didn’t say anything.</p><p>Phil slams his hands on the desk, and Tubbo jumps. “When were you going to tell me, that my son died?” </p><p>Something must have shown through on his face, because Phil looks at him then, and steps back. He laughs. It’s not the pretty noise that he knew long ago, a light chuckle that had reverberated in his chest, when they all had laughed too - no, this one is a deep rumble that rises out of a mix of hysteria and disbelief. Phil laughs, and says, “Are you fucking kidding me - you weren’t, were you?”</p><p>(In the doorway, Quackity and Fundy approach. They’re perplexed by the shouting, in the confusion that lines their expressions. They didn’t know either. He hasn’t talked to them enough to have gotten the courage to tell them either. Would they have understood? Would they have offered false sympathies?)</p><p>“<em>Were</em> you!?”</p><p>(His head is pounding, pounding like someone had taken an anvil to his skull, and he takes care not to look at where the bottle had been hidden, heavy in the drawer and drained dry. It felt like nothing going down. He was already burning from the inside, and he felt like he was swirling down the drain. Nothing feels quite right these days anyway.)</p><p>“Phil, I-” he rasps, but he can’t bring himself to say anything. What would he even say? Sorry that I exiled your son? Sorry that I killed him? Sorry I didn’t tell you about it? It’d be lying, to apologise for all these things when he <em> did </em>do them, and Tubbo is no liar. He’s not supposed to be.</p><p>It’d be lying, to apologise for all the things he did, because apologies beget forgiveness, and forgiveness anticipates the reversal of an action, and he can’t take anything back, he can’t undo anything, he can’t take back the decision and he can’t take back Tommy, and he is stuck with this for the rest of his miserable life because Tommy is dead and he’s never coming back. </p><p>It’d be lying to himself, to Phil, to Tommy, to apologise <em> now </em>, because his apology would be meaningless to the lives his actions cost, but Tubbo is a liar, and all he can offer anyone is meaningless platitudes, so he whispers, “I’m sorry.”</p><p>The man before him trembles, his brows twitching and tear tracks on his face, his expression a mix of pity towards his pathetic state and grieving fury, and he says quietly, “Sorry isn’t enough.”</p><p>He turns and stalks out, his wings like a cape, flaring out from behind him, feathers fluttering to the ground, and the growing chasm of emptiness widens within him.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u"> Interlude 2 </span>
</p><p>Here’s a secret everybody knows. Tubbo misses Tommy. He’ll never really say it outloud - in a similar manner to how Tommy would never admit to anything emotional (“Tommyinnit never cries!” He crows once, in the same manner as Technoblade’s <em>Technoblade never dies</em>. Tommyinnit is dead now, and he can’t help but hate the irony.), but you can tell he misses him anyway, in the way that he lingers at the site of every one of Tommy’s builds in L’manberg, grief lining the cracks in his mask. </p><p>Here’s a secret everybody knows - if you can’t find Tubbo in the office, or in his bee farm, you can always find him in one of Tommy’s old places. He’ll be in Tommy’s house, with an odd look on is face as he touches the smooth stone replacements in a house that no one will ever live in again; he’ll be seated on the bench under the tree, and if you look closely, you’ll find that he’s still holding a vinyl, delicately tracing his fingers along the plastic grooves of the disc, his shoulders hunched in on himself, violently trembling.</p><p>If you can’t find him at all, he’s probably atop Tommy’s intimidation tower. You know, the one that stretches for miles upon miles upward, with no end in sight, but no intention on continuing anytime soon He’ll be at the very top, eyes closed.</p><p> </p><p>(Tubbo climbs the tower, step by step. It’s a long walk, and he is so, so tired, but he manages to get to the top eventually. The air is thin, and it is dark enough for the faintest stars to speckle the sky. It’s hard to breathe, but Tubbo hasn’t been able to breathe right since that day anyway, so he pays no mind. </p><p>The clouds pass him by and he can feel their fine mist on his fingers, on his face. It’s daylight now, but here, it’s freezing cold. His cheeks burn with the bite of the wind, and under his skin he burns like fire.</p><p>In French, there is a word, “L’appel du vide”, that describes a ‘call to the void’, the moment on a ledge when you stand far above the ground and you get the urge to jump off. Just so see how it’d feel. Just to fly into the void. </p><p>Now he understands where the word comes from. He wonders, if Tommy had felt the same way, on the top of the tower in Logsteadshire. He wonders if Tommy had finally felt free all the way up on the ledge, under the expansive night sky, the way he does now. One step away from life, all the way up here. His lungs are filled with sand and his feet heavy like stone, and he knows if he falls, he’ll fall fast and hard and shatter on the ground, irreparable forever, and the thought of it makes his lungs deflate. He was breathless at the tower when he had finally understood what had happened, and now he’s breathless for a whole nother reason.</p><p> </p><p>He wonders if Tommy felt free when he fell.</p><p> </p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>He could see the appeal.)</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>8.</p><p>Once, Tubbo had asked Ghostbur, “What’s the afterlife like?”</p><p>He doesn’t know what courage had possessed him in that moment, to ask the ghost about the moments after his death, and right after he asks it, he regrets it momentarily, before the curiosity overwhelmed him and wiped it away. Ghostbut hadn’t visibly minded the question, however, and cheerfully responded with, “There’s nothing!”</p><p>He falters. “What?”</p><p>Quackity jumped in. “So what, there’s no heaven or hell?”</p><p>Ghostbur, much to Quackity’s morbid fascination, and his own discomfort, continued, “Imagine all your bones crush into you at once, for a split second. And then nothing - there is no god, no heaven, no hell, just infinite nothing.” He smiled, ignorant to Tubbo’s horrified expression, and Quackity’s disbelieving smile.</p><p>(Tubbo thought Ghostbur had been wrong, then. Now, he thinks Ghostbur was wrong for a whole other reason - there is no god, and there is no heaven, but there is a hell and they’re already there. </p><p>And for half a second, he thinks, they’ve all earned their spot here in the same way.)</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Once, he had asked ,”What’s dying like?” </p><p>He doesn’t know why he asked, but a part of him compelled him to ask anyway.</p><p>Ghostbur had paused, and then asked him back, “Well, um, for me, it was like a sword to the gut. But, don’t you already know what it feels like? You’ve… well, you’ve died before.”</p><p>Tubbo had. Dying then, felt like a stab to the back, cleaving him in two within an enclosed room. Dying felt like fire, scorching heat that had shredded him to bits with the blast, like color flaring in his vision as he slumped against the enclosed box. He didn’t know why he asked</p><p>(Now, it feels like withering away in life. Like he was decaying in pieces in the middle of L’manberg, like his rotten heart was about to fall out onto the ground before him, and he didn’t think dying could get any worse than this.)</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Now he asks, “Are you happier, as a ghost?”</p><p>He watches as the question processes through the expressions on the ghost’s face. He remembers how Wilbur had looked, once. His cheeks now pale and ghostly grey from what once had been a pleasantly flushed pink, his eyes dull and pupiless from a once golden brown, his hair ethereal and afloat from once having been an untamable mane. </p><p>“It’s great! Everyone likes me better when I’m dead, anyway.”</p><p>Tubbo shakes his head, and clarifies, “No, Ghostbur. I meant… are <em> you </em> happier, as a ghost?”</p><p>Now, Ghostbur pauses and his smile falters. “I … think I am… ? I can’t feel … sad, so that’s what counts, right?”</p><p>(Is it? Does it? Are you?)</p><p>He thinks about Wilbur, alive in his happiness, alive in his insanity, every action jarring in both ways, and he knows he had pitied Ghostbur for being only a sliver of a whole, once, but now he envies him, for himself, and now, for Tommy. </p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span class="u"> Interlude 3. </span>
</p><p>The music discs don’t matter, he had once told Tommy, who had stepped back in a moment of shock.</p><p>“If the discs don’t matter,” Tommy had stuttered back, surprisingly timid for once, “then why—if you don’t have any attachment to things, if they don’t matter, if nothing matters, then, why does any of this matter at all?”</p><p>“They’re just music discs.” He repeated, then, and in the next breath, exiles him.</p><p>But now, he understands. Oh, he understands, because he can’t stand the silence any more, because with Tommy, it there was life, life in the form of excitement, joy, passion, chaos, conflict, but there was more than life - with Tommy, there was <em> music </em> , noise, laughter, shouting, the two of them and everyone else, and there was something loud in the way Tommy’s cheeks reddened with embarrassment, the way he laughed, like a shout, because shouting was <em> Tommy’s </em>thing, and his awful posture, and the way the sun glinted off of wheat-colored hair in a golden glint, the way his blue, blue eyes stared at him, how he expressed himself in everything he did- </p><p>(the way he stopped, when the order was called, the way his face shuttered close, his posture straightened, and for a moment, for the first time, Tubbo couldn’t read him in the way Tommy held himself-)</p><p>Tommy himself was the music and the discs weren’t anything at all, but they were everything at the same time. It hurt then, because Tommy was willing to trade their friendship for the discs and Tubbo was willing to trade the discs for Tommy, but now he’s willing to trade everything for the discs too, because they’re all he has left.</p><p>[He plays them once, on a particularly quiet night, when Quackity was out dealing with El Rapids, and Ranboo was out Notch knows where, and nobody lingered in the L’manberg, because L’manberg had only gotten quieter. He puts it in the jukebox, in the corner of his office, and scooches his chair closer, so he could hear the faint waltz play through. It sounds nothing like Tommy, in the way it is slow and haunting, the ¾  count echoing through the room, but at the same time, it is exactly like Tommy, because it is a two person dance in a rise and fall motion on repeat, and he closes his eyes to the beat.</p><p>The door opens behind him, and he smells smoke. A chill goes up his spine, and he removes the disc from the jukebox, because if he’s holding it, it’ll be harder to steal, and he can’t think straight- “<em> If you want the disc, you’ll have to kill me first- </em>”</p><p> </p><p>“What?”</p><p> </p><p>Fundy stares at him from where he stood in the doorway, with a befuddled expression. He makes a grimace, and looks away, rubbing his neck.</p><p>“Is this a bad time?” he asks. Tubbo shakes his head, silently. The fox brightens. “Oh, okay, I was just going to tell you that um… me and Niki are uh… going on vacation. We’ll… we’ll be back later!”</p><p> </p><p>He’s left alone in his office.</p><p> </p><p>(The discs mean nothing sure, because there are hundreds of them on the server, and Dream could take any one of his pick if he wanted to, and everyone could farm for them for hours if they wanted to, and if discs were a currency, it’d make for an easy inflation, but here is the thing:</p><p>The discs matter, but only these two, because these are the two that they put the most value in. L’manberg is no different - land is meaningless unless you make it a home, and put value in the home, and there are people in that home, and now, the meaning of the discs only strengthen with the conflict over them, and now, the meaning of L’manberg begins to falter.</p><p>L’manberg is becoming like Pogtopia once was - a temporary place, as everyone moves on from it, up until the very moment it is left, abandoned in search of something better, left to gather dust, no longer valuable. They never acknowledge the possibility that there’s still TNT under Pogtopia, not because it isn’t a threat, but because Pogtopia, although no one would really ever say it out loud, wasn’t really something to be defended, anymore, because it wasn’t important, it wasn’t <em> home </em> anymore, and Tubbo doesn’t know what he’ll do when L’manberg becomes the same.</p><p>The discs matter because there are only two of them, in the same way there is only one of Tommy, and they could have any one of the millions of discs on the server, but he’ll only ever share these two with Tommy, and he’ll only ever have one Tommy, and he’s failed to cherish either of them in the end, and yes, he doesn’t care so much for the discs as he would his friend, but now he has no friend, but now it is just him and the discs-)</p><p>He holds the plastic vinyl to his heart, and wonders what he’ll do when they no longer have meaning, too.</p><p>(They held meaning, the moment they had listened to them on the jukebox, between the two of them, the music swirling around them and they had held joy in their hands for the first time on the bench, and then they had held meaning, in every piece of tragic history after, and now they hold meaning, in the memories they made together, lingering like music.)</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>(0).</p><p>Two days later, he walks into a hostage situation. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>i think i might've made tubbo a) too sad, b) too angry, d) all of the above... oh well, only one more chapter to go! :D and it is a short one too!! only 2k more to go..... h</p><p>also, i made a) a tumblr! and b) a discord! i have no clue who needs them but if you want them! or if you want like... a better way to shoot me ideas n questions! they are here! consider it a consolidation prize for making it this far aksjhdlajksh XD</p><p>the tumby: https://willthrowhands.tumblr.com .... but uh... the discy is on the  secret link somewhere on the tumby haha (scavenger hunt?) &gt;:]c </p><p>the next chapter should be up soon! remember to like, comment and subscribe if you liked this video! ... oh wait, i'm not a youtuber.... h</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. what you don't</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>the president, the hostage, and the exile</p><p>(and so the story concludes)</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>so uh, the war yesterday, huh? *gets shot*<br/>well this chapter is a doozy. i feel like i didn't get the dialogue quite right, but oh well. i went to sleep on it, and still couldn't change it. hopefully it still makes you sad.</p><p>tw warnings: suicidal thoughts, suicide mention, and vaguely substance abuse? couldn't tell if the pufferfish bit (think: the peaches vod from fundy's stream) was "substance abuse" per say, but it kinda looked like the effect of drugs so be careful! let me know if you think i should put any more here.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>0.</p><p>The Greeks had been fond of the number three. It’s prevalent in many of their myths, after all - three fates, three-headed dogs, three old hags, three sirens, three brothers - this, he knows, from Technoblade, and more. Three, in philosophy, presents itself through Plato’s idea of the self - Ego, Super-Ego, Id. </p><p>Three is the simplest circle. Three Blind Mice. Goldilocks and the three bears. Phil and his three boys. Take one point out, and the structure collapses (<em> and so, Phil loses a son by his hand, and then his son leaves, and then his son is sent away </em> ). Add one, and you have a square ( <em> tubbo is the outside looking in, but tommy brings him in, and wilbur accepts him too- </em> ), or you have a hanger, dangling by one point only ( <em> and it is only tommy, in the end. tommy, who has never sacrificed him as a playing piece for their own sake, neither by rocket nor by button, but in the end, it’s tommy who is about to trade him for the discs, and so he trades tommy away first- </em>).</p><p>Three, in literature, presents itself simply instead: beginning, middle, end. Rise, conflict, conclusion. The first war, the second, the third. L’manberg, Manberg, New L’manberg. Having the discs, losing the discs and then no more discs. Whether these conclusions are happy endings or not, they are ultimately that: a conclusion. There is no changing the end.</p><p>It’s the way they die, too. It’s the way Tommy died - One death, two death, three deaths - betrayal, bravery, beaten. Or it’s the way Tubbo falls apart: one death, two death, three. A betrayal, a betrayal, and now, he holds the key to the conclusion, for now, it is his choice how his story ends. </p><p> </p><p>In the end, they are all an act in three parts.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>1. </p><p>Tubbo has always put himself aside for others. That’s never been a problem - because if everyone was happy around him, he wouldn’t be selfish in pursuing his own happiness.</p><p>So now, when it comes to himself, he doesn’t know how to grieve in any way that doesn’t hurt. </p><p> </p><p>Somedays, he can almost pretend nothing has changed, that he never went through the portal, that there isn’t a hole under L’manberg, that nobody has left. </p><p>These days, Fundy had come back from wherever he went with Niki, Quackity could be seen from the view in the office with Ranboo, decorating the lamp posts with holiday decor - or really, Quackity laughing as Ranboo struggles to free himself, wrapped in lighting cords (or really, Quackity laughing as Tubbo got tangled in the very paper he had been trying to string from the very same lampposts). </p><p>Tubbo wants to help, and he almost does - he manages to go outside, and he heads over to where the two were fighting, intent on helping out… but he faltered, once he had made the distance. He closes his eyes, and hears the faint crackling of the firework, hears faint laughter, laughter he knows isn’t real, and then he goes back to his office. He never quite makes it all the way over.</p><p>Instead, he goes back to his office, and pulls out some printer paper. He folds it once, twice, four times, and makes neat trims down the corners and the folds. He unfolds a snowflake. It’s simple, colorless, effortless. It’s simpler than all of the lights being strung in L’Manberg</p><p>But instead, he tapes it to the window, and calls it decor.</p><p> </p><p>Somedays, he can’t stand L’manberg (it’s much too festive, much too decorative, for a place without his friend) and he can’t stand himself (he’s much too okay for someone who had lost his best friend, how could he even breathe without him, how could he have moved on-). On these days, it’s empty, a haunting beauty you find only in snowglobes, a populationless country, a ghost town run by a fool.</p><p>On those days, he sits at his desk at the office, and stares at the work before him. The words swim around and crawl right of the edge of the page, and his eyes are burning hot and dry (and his face, his chest is burning hot, the pressure unbearable as the blast shreds him from the outside in - he feels it in slow motion as he’s torn apart within a moment, he’s pressed against concrete walls and his eyes wide and watering), but he can’t close them. He’s so tired, more tired than he’s ever been in his life, he carries this exhaustion in every part of his body - it weighs down in his bones, squeezing his ribs tighter than breathing, in the way he slumps in his chair like all his strings have been cut at once, unable to posture appropriately for presentation.</p><p>He’s so tired, but he’ll never sleep. He can’t because sleeping is worse than being awake, because in his sleep, he dreams, and all he dreams of is what haunts him. He’s so tired, but he wants to sleep. He wants to, because being awake is worse than being asleep, because he lives in a world where his friend had died because he let him, because in his dreams, even if he’s haunted, he still has his friend.</p><p>He knows he should get up and go home, because he’s been here for hours, and for hours more he’ll stay, but his house hasn’t been home for a while, and now, he only exists within the space of this room, and he doesn’t know what he’ll become outside of it. So for now, he curls up in his chair, trying to take up as little space as possible even though he is alone, and tries to squeeze all the emptiness out of him. Inside, he’s made of the same spacious craters, the same ones under the wooden boardwalks that raise L’manberg off the ground, a hollow pit covered by fragile replacements, and now, he’s being filled with water. </p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Somedays, he sees Tommy, wandering L’manberg. He’s pointing at things, excitedly, his face flashing through rage and joy in the same expression, and he looks livelier for someone who is dead. </p><p>On those days, and every day after, he can’t put his tie on right. His fingers are too stiff to move, and the clip is too cold to touch. </p><p> </p><p>So instead, he takes a stolen string of lights, wraps it around his sweater, and calls it decour.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>2.</p><p>Phil’s house is empty. Tubbo knows this, because he goes there often. Phil built it similarly to what Tubbo remembers, and it’s the one place in all of L’manberg that he calls home, even if Phil gives him those looks (once, pity - now, distaste), and the Butcher army demand a divide in his loyalties (he’s not your friend, you’ve got to help us tubbo, you’ve got to listen to us, don’t make that mistake again, don’t be schlatt-), and even if it’s horribly empty and L’manberg is horribly empty, it’s the one place he feels like he’s home. Even if Phil wouldn’t have let him, if he knew. He thinks Phil’s patience has run out on him, wonders if his ability to love and tolerate died with Wilbur, but most of the time, he thinks Phil just thinks Tubbo wasn’t worth the effort at this point, far too gone. A lost cause, like his grandson, except for Fundy, Phil would probably take back, since Fundy has the last drops of blood left from Wilbur, and it’s in the same familiar shade of golden-brown eyes, the arch of his brows, the slight curls, familiar features, familiar mannerisms. Tubbo is nothing to Phil, nothing to all of them, and so he lingers in this place and calls it home.</p><p>It’s home, like the Carmarvan is, like an empty ravine is, like L’manberg had been, once. Once, these places had been cherished. Once, he had lived and laughed in each and everyone of those places, once, he had found friends there, once, he had family there. Now, all of these places are mirror paintings, and he is left to walk the reflection of what was in the space of what is. </p><p>Phil’s house is empty, because Phil had escaped what had been his prison. Phil’s house isn’t empty, because Tubbo sits there, and closes his eyes. He doesn’t know what compels him, to do this, because it brings him nothing, in the end. Just wood shavings on his trousers and silence on the mind, and he doesn’t tell anyone that it’s empty, because then they’d ask him why.</p><p>He tries this, once, with Tommy’s house. All he can hear is the disc playing on repeat, a 1-2-3 beat, Tommy’s laughter, Tommy screaming, and all he sees from the bench is the missing walls. He thinks to himself, more often than he’ll ever admit, that they should’ve never even bothered with the walls. Because it didn’t matter in the end - if they had the walls up, they’d be trapped, but at least they’d be together, and now, the walls are down, and L’manberg is free for the price of his friend, and L’manberg is empty, and Tommy is dead. </p><p>Now, Tubbo has everything he’s bargained for, and nothing he wants.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>2 ½.</p><p>And so, Tubbo tries to piece himself together. But he’s glued all the shards the wrong way, he’s losing the shape himself and he doesn’t know how to put himself the right way, and he’s afraid he’ll be stuck that way. And so the week passes by.</p><p> </p><p>On Monday, nothing changes. Tubbo wakes up in the office, and goes to sleep there, and nothing feels quite right, but he’s much too numb at this point to care. He locks the door often, with the curtains drawn, away from the rest of the world, because whatever this feeling is his own fault and so so wrong in the way it is huge and the way that his friend is dead, and he is drowning in air. He’s walking in a haze most of the time - and it is all too familiar, this haze. He walks in a maze of it continuously, and he is lost, but he can’t see far enough ahead to recognize anything around him, so he keeps walking. The tower is perpetually under his feet, and the clouds drifting past, their moisture collecting on his hot face, his fingers so cold they burn, and every moment feels like stepping off. He imagines what it’d feel like. He thinks he’d break if he did, like shattering glass, like an empty vase knocked off the table. Like the snowglobe he threw at Dream - full of bone dust and funny water, broken on the wall and futile in its effect on the man he’d thrown it at. All he ever dreams about now is the tower, and the sand burns his hands and knees, and all he sees is Tommy falling, falling, falling. </p><p> </p><p>On Monday, he makes a mistake. All he can taste is the rubbery pufferfish between his lips, and every moment passes by like the world’s slowest snail race, the world itself slow, stretching and twisting around him, and he’s nauseated by the motion but he’s too numb to move. He can't talk the way he wants, and listens to himself echo, over and over and over, endlessly, and Ranboo gives him a worried glance, but he doesn't know how to stop. He talks about peaches and mush and bones, and Fundy stares at him in confusion, and his hands are trembling so much they look blurry, and his tongue is thick in his mouth, and he always hears music. He wants to tell Fundy <em> don’t go, i need you </em> , but he ends up saying <em> your bones belong to me </em> and it’s not quite what he meant, but at the same time, it holds the same meaning. He doesn’t have many words these days, and they all come out wrong anyway, but he tries to string them together like friendship bracelets for the people who leave, and he can only hope they are enough to stay.</p><p> </p><p>On Monday, he is alone. What with Fundy and Niki’s plans on leaving, (the smell of smoke fades from the building, and he’s not sure if he should be grateful for it, or mourn its absence in the shape of his missing cabinet member), and Ranboo’s odd absences (he acts like he doesn’t notice, the long breaks Ranboo takes, off and out of L’manberg, and tells himself that it doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t want to know, because if he knew, then Ranboo might become him, and himself Schlatt, and he can’t take another festival parallel-), with Quackity being all planning these days, often donned in his butcher army outfit (so serious, they hardly talked nowadays with Quackity busy with building a government, because ultimately Quackity desired power, because if you were powerful, because if you had order, you had peace in the form of stability, and Tubbo is powerless.</p><p>But the thing is, he is powerless, because he chooses it. Because Fundy and Quackity protested the last time he spoke up, because Dream had his hand over the button always, because he had no choice - the thing is, he isn’t <em> blind </em>, he knows what it meant, when Dream and Quackity, them primarily with many others behind him, talk him into things. He sees what they’re doing, he lets them lead him by the rope, he lets himself be their sacrificial sheep and he is unable to change his situation. </p><p>Because to change the situation meant to be strong, and to be strong meant to be powerful. He wants to be powerful, because power affords him selfishness, but it also granted every president before him their hubris, and then their downfall. It wouldn’t be so bad to be like them, to succumb to his own selfishness, to die by it, but then it’d cost everyone else around him, and he cannot afford to be selfish, and to be selfish meant you were powerful, and so he couldn’t be powerful.</p><p>So instead, he closes his eyes and lets them pull the lead, because being strong meant being powerful and being powerful meant being like Schlatt, meant being like Wilbur, and so he has dulled his teeth and cut his horns, and let them call him powerless in exchange for their alliances and their friendships, and all their little moments in between, because without them, Tubbo is purposeless. He was always meant to be a right-hand man to the more bold, anyway. </p><p>And now Tommy is gone. So he lets them take pieces out of him and now he’s full of holes. He wonders when his foundation will finally crumble under the weight, and he thinks it will be soon.)</p><p> </p><p>He swears he sees Technoblade walking around the borders of L’manberg (or so he thinks, he sees shadows on the fringe of the horizon, and it’s all he sees, shapes behind him, aftermath of war-), and he thinks about the festival. It’s all he really does these days, anyways. Schlatt’s voice, the command, Techno’s rocket launcher pointed between his eyes. His awful death, plastered against the walls of the still-wet concrete blocks, as the blast shredded him apart, as he burned alive from the outside in, and now, he relishes in the thought of the blackness afterwards.</p><p>Techno never had apologised, really, for the festival. And Tubbo had seemed to forgive him despite it - but the thing is, Techno never apologised, so Tubbo never voiced a forgiveness, and he can’t help but be simultaneously grateful and resentful of this fact - because if Techno apologised, he’d be obligated to forgive him for what he’d put him through, because Tubbo always forgives everyone, because he is so kind-hearted and nice, and he is, but forgiveness meant that Techno could take it back, and he couldn’t, because Tubbo was irreparable for it. But he’s resentful in the fact that Techno didn’t feel obligated to apologise, because he didn’t see it as something he needed to apologise for, that he didn’t regret all that much for, and that stings, that Tubbo was never a hard choice to make, because how many times could those in power around him always make that choice? </p><p>He tries not to dwell on it too much, but the burning lingers, a torchlight fire lit in the deep dark spacious caverns inside, and the thought remains.</p><p> </p><p>On Monday, he plays the disc, again. He stops when he sees Dream through the office window, from under the table where he had dragged the jukebox to. It’s not Dream, though, just a creeper, but he hates them both the same way, so he puts the disc back into the enderchest. The silence is haunting, in the way it is familiar, in the way he has gotten used to it. He does this several more times during the day, stolen moments under the desk. But the thing is, he may cherish the discs, and so did Tommy, but so does Dream. And Dream lingers often, outside his office, his presence a constant warning. </p><p>He remembers a time when the discs meant everything, but only because Tommy cared about them, and he cared about Tommy. He remembers when they had won everything for them, when they had lost them and everything. He remembers Tommy’s momentary silence, on the bench, as the gentle chipper tunes of Cat played on the jukebox, the sunset casting pink highlights on Tommy’s wheat-coloured hair, his cornflower blue eyes shut as his head swayed to the melody. </p><p>He remembers the moment the discs had meant <em> something, </em> to him, for once - the moment Tommy had defined the choice he was making, between Tubbo and the music, that they had become something of value to him. Because if Tommy wanted to choose the discs over him, that meant they had to have more value than him, and he knew it was because the discs reminded him of the good times, the ones before Wilbur had thrown himself on the sword, before everything he had loved went up in one button press, before he had been banished from his home, but the thing is, Tubbo had been there, then, too - and then more than that. The discs hadn’t been there every time Tommy needed something, needed someone, the discs hadn’t been there when Tommy was alone in Pogtopia (and maybe neither was Tubbo, but he pulled his goddamn weight, and he pulled every line, because Tommy was his friend beyond friendship, because they all needed a yes-man for the sake of their own sanity, and Tubbo changed his tune so that he could give them the song they wanted), and yet, it was the discs that Tommy cared about. It was the discs that he was willing to give up Tubbo for, and a jealousy rose, a green lion in his chest, and he’s shouting <em> they don’t matter, don’t you see that- </em></p><p> </p><p>(“<em> You have the choice to stab me in the back, or choose L’Manberg, Tubbo-” </em></p><p>
  <em> “... Escort Tommyinnit out of my country, Dream.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p><em> ‘Surely not…’ </em>)</p><p> </p><p>He remembers the moment he understood their meaning, when there was nothing left of home in L’manberg, the moment he truly registered that Tommy was gone, that silence was here to stay forever, and he played the disc for the first time upon it entering his possession, and at it was then, that moment, he understood what the discs had stood for.</p><p>But now, <em> now, </em>he has no right to cherish the discs, because he never cared about them until they had become Tommy’s dirge. And as much as he wanted to, and as much as he’d gotten attached, as much as he wants to listen to the music (his head is numb and his hollow insides echo the noise, but it sounds like Tommy and that’s all he needs), and he’s afraid Dream will take them from him, and he’s already gotten used to the silence.</p><p>Tubbo had already sacrificed too much for this country, to lose this last piece, too, to let what he has to become a broker piece in another bargain. So he puts the disc away, quietly lifting the chest’s lid and placing it somewhere in the infinitesimal expanse within. When he closes the chest, he lays his head against the lid, and imagines the music in his head, and pretends that the floor is the bench and the chest was the jukebox, and Tommy was behind him, safely on the ground and not far far above it.</p><p> </p><p>And so, Tubbo tries to piece himself together. But he’s glued all the shards the wrong way, he’s losing the shape himself and he doesn’t know how to put himself the right way, and he’s afraid he’ll be stuck that way. </p><p>So instead, he takes himself apart and puts his pieces into boxes and calls it rationality.</p><p> </p><p>On Monday, they set a funeral date. He tries not to think about it.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>3.</p><p>Two days later, Ranboo peeks through the doorway.</p><p> </p><p>“Uh, Tubbo?” He asks, quietly, lingering in the doorway. He looks nervous, like Tubbo had once been. Tubbo sighs, and prompts him. “Yes, Ranboo?”</p><p> </p><p>“We have a.. um, a hostage situation.” Of course they do. He gets up (fingers trembling, he hadn’t left in days, he’s so tired and his head weighs heavy like the anvil he helped prop up on the tower, so long ago, but not that long-), and treks out the door. </p><p> </p><p>He walks in on Technoblade, dragging a bedraggled, soaking-wet Connor behind him. The demand is clear, give Techno back his things, or Connor gets it. He sighed. Somehow, this was predictable (his nose throbs from the punch, the plaster having finally been wrangled onto him, but it’s still crooked but he can’t be bothered, the sound of fireworks crackling away-).</p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t anticipate the next moment, when Tommy steps out from behind him. Tommy, who was dead. Tommy, who isn’t dead, and he’s not a hallucination, and Tubbo knows this in the way Ranboo gasps behind him, quietly, but moreso in the way Tommy looks - whole, and solid. Every golden strand of hair, shifting with his turning head, his skin pale and flushed, his eyes blue like ice and pupils narrow, brows furrowed in a fury. Tommy is not dead, because his hair doesn’t float, because he is not pale and unsaturated like Ghostbur, because he is right in front of him, and he is not dead.</p><p> </p><p>“....Tommy?” he whispers, almost disbelievingly. And Tommy meets his eyes.</p><p> </p><p>They might carry their scars on their skin, a story told half way, but the look in his eyes completes a forbidden narrative - their dull, dark blue glazed-over shine describing one of pain and loneliness in the form of a justified anger, the dark circles underneath mirroring that of Tubbo’s, a pain that comes only in the form of nightmares and waking up after.</p><p> </p><p>He steps back.</p><p> </p><p>“Hello Tubbo.” Tommy’s voice is raspy, worn, and Tubbo flinches, because that’s <em>his friend</em>. That’s <em>his</em> <em>voice</em>, but also <em>not</em>, in the way it is unfamiliar in its familiar sound. He sounds so quiet.</p><p> </p><p>“I thought you were dead,” he chokes, and he can feel a familiar heat well up in his eyes.</p><p> </p><p>Tommy’s brows furrow further, and he can feel the line between them, the distance between the two compasses pull, become tenser. “What do you mean?”</p><p> </p><p>It’s spoken quietly, because Tommy has been nothing but quiet by far, and it is the loudest he’s ever been. Tubbo’s heart races, and there is a hidden malevolence in those words, the way they are spoken, because Tommy is upset and he is here, but he is here, he is <em> here, how- </em></p><p> </p><p>“... I … I thought you died-” he says wetly. Something changes in Tommy’s gaze, from cold to burning hot within a snap, like a fire fueled by that confession. He steps forward, half a step, and Tommy steps back, behind Techno, and it’s that one movement that makes his heart break even further.</p><p> </p><p>“...” </p><p> </p><p>Tubbo smiles, his lips stiff, and he’s sure it looks strange on his face, but he hadn’t been one for smiling the day he’d killed his best friend, but he makes an effort. </p><p> </p><p>“But I guess you didn’t!” he exclaims with false cheer (he is happy, no, he is so so happy, this is unreal, and he’s afraid he’s going to wake up like he always does because he always reaches out and that’s the mistake because that’s where the dream always ends, so he lets himself linger in this moment while he can-)</p><p> </p><p>Tommy’s expression darkens, and shouts (and tubbo flinches, at the harsh noise, familiar in its unfamiliarity, at the way it scratches his throat, unexpected-), “What, you thought I died out there? When- when you exiled me?”</p><p> </p><p>It’s a conversation neither of them are ready for, because Tommy doesn’t understand why Tubbo would abandon him to that fate, because Tubbo hadn’t quite gotten over the tower, because their narratives ring around the devastation in Logsteadshire, following each other around the pillar but never quite touching. It shows in the way they both flinch when it’s said, a blow to Tommy’s ribs (in the reminder that he almost died, that dream wasn’t his friend but he was but tommy almost died and it would've been one of their faults and why didn’t tubbo visit didn’t he care dream said he didn't dream lies), like a blow to Tubbo’s ribs (in the reminder that he never visited because dream said not and exiled his friend and it was his choice and his punishment and the one time he goes his friend is dead and he learns too late dream lies).</p><p> </p><p>“You fucking did! You thought I died - you, you prick! I bet you were ha-” </p><p> </p><p>“<em> No! </em>” Tubbo shouts, desperately, panic pounding in his chest. “B-”</p><p> </p><p>“You probably didn’t even miss me!”</p><p> </p><p>Tubbo blinks back tears, and something hot runs in him like fire. “I missed you, I fucking <em> mourned you </em> , you <em> died </em>-”</p><p> </p><p>“I was <em> alone </em>,” Tommy shouts over him, like every time he argues with anyone, and now it is between the two of them. “You never even tried to visit me!”</p><p> </p><p>Tubbo freezes (because it’s true because you didn’t go ohh you might have wanted to but you never went and you let yourself be convinced by dream that tommy didn’t need you but dream is a liar but you can’t blame him for it it was your choice-). “W-w, no-”</p><p> </p><p>Tommy is on a roll, and he does not stop. He never has. He never will, and Tubbo tries so hard to get a word in, but he is overruled, because he never stands his ground loud enough to be heard, and so Tommy goes, “You never came to my party! Dream said-” (what party? I wasn’t invited to a party, what are you <em>talking</em> about) “Dream- Dream said you didn’t- you never came! (dream said- he said you didn’t want me there, he said you hated me-) You <em>never</em> <em>came to visit me</em>!”</p><p> </p><p>There is a beat. </p><p> </p><p>He opens his mouth, and there is so much he wants to say elsewise, so much, he missed Tommy so much, how was he alive, he wanted to see Tommy again, why are you with techno, but [you really didn’t show up. Is he wrong?] nothing comes out. Tommy sees something in his expression, frozen, and his face becomes impassive once more. </p><p> </p><p>Off to the side, Technoblade shifts the crossbow in his hand, loaded with an arrow with a red tip (grips the crossbow in his hand, loaded with the firework, red tip, aimed at-) </p><p> </p><p>They stare at each other. Tommy’s gaze icily blue, and Tubbo’s, a watery mess.</p><p> </p><p>And then Technoblade starts talking. Technoblade calls for the confession, the execution he had let run (and he hadn’t done anything to perpetuate it, but nothing to stop it either, instead passive until he had enough from phil mocking him from his prison-home, and he’d been knocked down-), and then Tommy’s face switches from impassive to horrified to outraged, and-</p><p> </p><p>“You’re a,” Tommy laughs, dry and short, disbelieving. “You’re a monster!”</p><p> </p><p>It rings through his head. Monster, (but tommy is alive and even if he hates you, he’s alive, and that’s all that matters, why are you so hurt by this-) but the title fits. It’s what he feels like most days, and so his mouth snaps shut.</p><p> </p><p>Tommy holds his head high, and Connor, their hostage, wheezes in the background, and now Techno is talking, but all he can smell is burning, and his heart is railing itself against his ribcage, and he thinks he is going to keel over, over onto the wooden planks beneath him, like his predecessor before him. He wants to, almost. </p><p> </p><p>They ask for two things, the two of them, Techno and Tommy (there is a strange camaraderie between the two of them, and he doesn’t know when Tommy had stopped going at Techno for what he did to Tubbo at the festival, but he thinks, secretly, it was because Tubbo was no longer worth fighting for, the moment he had failed his friend). Two things, that Tubbo had withheld from Technoblade as long as he could, the leftover weapons he had shuttled away into his chest, Dream’s sword, Techno’s tools, Tommy’s discs, and he is stuck in between a rock and a hard place, but it is almost always a box, and so he pulls himself together, if only for a little bit.</p><p> </p><p>He straightens his posture, he schools his face, and becomes Tubbo the spy, the liar, the pretender, because you fake it until you make it, and Tubbo cannot make it anymore, and so he puts on his president posturing. He asks Ranboo to find the tools, and tries to keep the shaking out of his voice. He thinks he does it well enough, by the way Tommy flinches when Tubbo turns to him suddenly, in president mode (and he is the worst president they’ve ever seen, and he is a mockery of one, a boy in an all too big suit, his country is empty and his position is worthless).</p><p> </p><p>“Ranboo, please bring Technoblade’s crossbow and pickaxe.” The hybrid startles at his name, having been timidly slouched behind him. In the corner of his eye, he can see the sweat beading on his brows, and Ranboo looks as stressed as he feels. But he has no time, and he cannot be anything but professional in this moment.</p><p> </p><p>In moments, he finds himself handing the weapon that had killed him to the man who had killed him with it, accompanied by the boy who had once been his deceased friend. He does not think about the festival when he trades hands with Technoblade, he <em> does not think about it- </em> and then he gives him the pickaxe ( <em> are you sure, mr. president </em>, Ranboo whispers, but the thing is he does not look so surprised, not even after having held Tubbo while he fell apart over his only friend’s death, and Tubbo will not think about that right now-). Techno takes both items, and he tries not to startle when he steps forward to take them. He watches only the pickaxe in his hands, glimmering netherite, and thinks about the scar on Quackity's face, from his cheek to his lip, a long slash downward. He tries not to think about it.</p><p> </p><p>But it's when they turn to leave, that he can’t help himself - he reaches out (and if you reach, the dream ends, because you can never ever have what you want, because when you reach, tommy falls), and he shouts, “Tommy, wait, I- I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, please, don’t, I’m so sorry-” </p><p> </p><p>Tommy turns around, slowly. “Tubbo…” He starts, and then shakes his head. </p><p> </p><p>“Sorry isn’t enough.”</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>They leave through the portal. A piece of Tubbo leaves with them, too.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>4.</p><p>Something like a calm washes over him, the moment they leave. Connor bolts, from where he had been standing, paralyzed by his captors, and Ranboo comments, “Well, that was… er, could’ve gone better, huh?” and Tubbo realises he’s trembling, but he can’t feel it. He can’t feel anything at all.</p><p> </p><p>It’s not calmness, in the form of anything other than the strangeness of being himself in this moment. He feels like he’s been blown to bits again, burning hot with none of the pain, and all of the bursts and sparks go off inside his chest with none of the colourful flourish the firework once had. He’s floating above them all, above this crater of a country, unweighted for once, walking on the air he breathes. He is empty, and the space around him is empty, because he is alone, and his friend is missing, but now, Tommy is alive.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Tommy is alive, oh my god, he’s alive he didn’t die- </em>
</p><p> </p><p><em> He didn’t die, no thanks to you </em> , a voice helpfully offers. <em> You never helped him. He could’ve died, and it would’ve been your fault. You got lucky. You’re lucky the only thing he is right now, is angry at you. </em></p><p> </p><p><em> But that’s okay </em> , the tranquility tells him. <em> You’re all of the things he said you are, and that’s okay, because if not you, then who else? </em></p><p> </p><p>(Later, when he locks himself in his office, he closes his eyes and slumps against the door. It’s quiet, so the only noise he can hear is the ringing in his ears, and L’manberg is empty. He is putting all of his chips in trying to fix this damned country, and all it does is break itself apart. And in the end, it really shouldn’t have been his responsibility to fix - he was handed the keys to the country by a man who sought to destroy it seconds later, and it’s true, he had been extremely flattered by it, but (“Tubbo… you’re the president of a <em>crater!</em>” a manic shrill pierced through the comms, and within seconds, his joy is sent up into the air with one loud blast, and there’s Techno and he has a cro-), but he wasn’t built for it. Not even when he plays the part, when he shoulders the responsibility, and seeks the old peace. Because once, L’manberg had been a place where men could go, emancipate from the tyranny of their rulers, because once L’manberg had been a place where they all had been loved and loved each other, because once, Wilbur had been alive, and Eret hadn’t betrayed them, and Techno had done nothing to them, and it was whole and one piece, and every memory made there was memorialized by the country in the form of nostalgia, because once L’manberg had been his family, and family means stability, and family means peace, and sometimes all he wants nowadays is a hug.</p><p> </p><p>But the meaning of L’manberg changed the moment Wilbur had blown it all up, deeming it worthless, but it changed before that. It changed the moment Schlatt had crushed the meaning of freedom and safety and family under his shiny shoe, moments after the conclusion of the election. No, it changed before that - it changed the moment there was something to betray, and so Eret had done so, and they couldn’t look at each other the same way since. No, it changed, and he’s not sure he’ll ever get it back, but he can’t help but try.</p><p> </p><p>The calmness leaves him empty, and his heart <em> thump thump thump </em>s and something is squeezing in his chest, like all of his ribs, his infrastructure collapsing all at once, inside of him, a cave-in of the greatest magnitude. He thinks he is falling apart under gravity, the moment he stopped floating.</p><p> </p><p>There is an open secret, that every one in L'manberg knows. Tubbo is the worst president L'manberg has ever has. He is their worst president, because he is a willing puppet on strings he’s tied around himself, because he sacrifices too much to keep the memorial grounds of their greatest president, and he lets everyone take the pieces he’d broken into, because if he doesn’t have anything left to give, then they won’t stay for him. He is their worst president, because ultimately he is afraid of being selfish, because if he were selfish, he’d be powerful, and if he were powerful, he’d be selfish, and all he’s learned is that being selfish hurts everybody around him, so he puts aside his own desires, and lets everyone have theirs.</p><p>(He is also their best one. Take that as you will.)</p><p> </p><p>Tommy had called him a monster, then. Tubbo thinks he’d like to be one, because monsters were strong and unafraid in their actions, because monsters where ones like Schlatt, like Wilbur, because they were strong and selfish, and he's not. He wants to be, though, but he's afraid, and he cannot decide on what he wants, if what he wants is what everyone wants, if he's right in wanting. Everyone thinks he’s a monster these days, but they only see the patchwork mess he’s made trying to stitch himself together, with every role he played, and now he plays the role of the president, their horrible president, and he doesn’t know how long he can act.  If he’s a monster, then he’ll act that out, too. It’s all he knows how to do, at this point, because the real tubbo is buried somewhere underneath all the suits and the uniforms, and he’s not sure if he’ll ever find him again.</p><p> </p><p>He eyes the jukebox in the office.</p><p> </p><p>Tommy is alive. Tommy is alive, and it’s all that matters in the end, even if he was pissed off at Tubbo for never visiting, even if he thought Tubbo was a monster, he was alive. Tommy hated him. Tommy <em> should </em> hate him. He hates himself more, though.</p><p> </p><p>(<em> I want to visit tommy </em> , he says to dream. <em> I miss him </em>. dream hesitates. Sorry, tubbo, he begins, and he lies, because that’s what dream does, he lies, and he manipulates, and he takes tubbo’s best friend from him and tells him its his fault, but he’s right it is his fault you can’t blame dream for that it is your fault-)</p><p> </p><p>And now all Tommy wants are the discs back. Nothing has changed (but when he closes his eyes, all he can see is the outline of the tower, in the black night sky, the quiet ocean waves washing up the beach shore, the smell of smoke everywhere, the craters, the tower standing tall like the world’s worst effigy-).</p><p> </p><p>And maybe he’ll give it to him. And maybe he won’t. Because the disc had meaning in Tommy’s death, but now Tommy is not dead, but he has nothing of Tommy left to cherish, to protect and hold, and so maybe he’ll keep the discs, if only for a little longer.</p><p> </p><p>And so Tubbo is left alone, with a country just as broken as he is. Craters under wallpaper, caverns under boardwalks, together scorched, together ripped apart. They only have each other, now.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“So uh, we’re not holding a funeral then, huh,” Ranboo prompts, unhelpfully. Tubbo stares after the portal, where Dream had just exited from. From where Techno and Tommy had just left. From where he had gone, and seen the worst thing he’d ever think to witness. </p><p> </p><p>Dream stops, somewhere, and turns his head, slightly. The cold white porcelain glints in the fading sunlight, and then he’s walking away. Armorless.</p><p>Tubbo pauses, and thinks.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>"Maybe a festival would be better suited," he says.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I love each and everyone of you, who’ve made it this far to the end ❤️❤️ thank you for reading!! Let me know what you thought - i love all of your comments!!! and have been using your thoughts so far as a base for the next chapter i would write, so really half the work belongs to you guys haha - feel free to make long comments too, i dont mind! if youve just got specific parts you liked, feel free to quote 'em! if youve got long analysis comments, comment em! and if you just wanna say &lt;3,  comment that! i love all of your comments &lt;3 &lt;3 &lt;3</p><p>I'm considering doing a piece like this for yesterday's affairs, because oooh boy are there some parts i wanted to articulate better, and what better way to do that than writing ... more character study. yay.</p><p>Anyway, I have a discord group now, if you wanna gimme ideas or just get sneak peek previews or something haha: https://discord.gg/KfRHvbGPE9<br/>consider it your consolation prize for... well, this entire fic :]</p><p>EDIT: CHANGED THE TITLE FROM "NO HAPPY ENDINGS" TO "WALK ON STAGE" BECAUSE I WANNA USE THAT TITLE FOR UH... something else ;]</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>let me know what you thought in the comments!!! i love comments. they are the gasoline to my writing fire. fu e l m e,, ANYWAY i hope you enjoyed it!! :] 🤲❤️</p></blockquote></div></div>
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